


Professional Murder Music

by deadonarrival



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: BAMF Bucky Barnes, Blood and Gore, Casual Drug Use, Friends to Lovers, Infinity War? I don't know her, M/M, Possible Body Horror, Sex, Slow Burn, Smoking, Steve Rogers is a miscreant and bad influence and no one believes Bucky about that, Violence, bucky barnes is kind of a sassy fuck, did I mention violence, it's violent, non-canon compliant and i don't care, please read chapter notes for full warnings, seriously, talk of PTSD, talk of death, talk of past traumas, talk of triggers, tony stark is good with androids and assassins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-06-14 16:47:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 31,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15393090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deadonarrival/pseuds/deadonarrival
Summary: Bucky is awake in the current day and gosh he likes a lot of things about the future like wifi, smart phones, Steve Rogers, low rise denim, and iced coffee. What he really hates is that all the sudden his memories are coming back and not in the way he expects them to... and not the memories he wants.





	1. American Girl

**Author's Note:**

> You know how when you hear a song and you're suddenly an emotionally compromised teenage girl again? Okay now imagine that, but you're Bucky Barnes and you have an 80 year long time span to choose from and instead of feeling like an emotionally compromised teenage girl you feel like ... well... The Winter Soldier. 
> 
> I will try to tag by chapter for specific things but please heed the general fic warnings and expect those to apply throughout. Except the sex one because that's not happening for a little big longer. 
> 
> Trigger warnings specific to this chapter: blood, guns, violence, murder, flashbacks to Bucky's days as Hydra's asset.

The first time it happens, Bucky is in Tony’s lab. The constant background hum of music and robotics only interrupted by Tony’s ongoing monologue.  
  
“It’s not a big deal, just a few upgrades, it’s all software related, not hardware so you can just sit here and relax while it does it’s little-“ there are hand motions meant to signify the thing that Tony’s machines are doing.  
  
Bucky nods and looks down to the wires that are connected under plates in his arms and run over to a console station where little lines of code are running across the screen. Tony hums at them with a smile and Bucky assumes this must all be a good thing.  
  
This _is_ a good thing.  
  
He’s safe, he’s got friends, he’s got shelter, he doesn’t have a handler, he’s not an asset, he’s just Bucky.  
  
This is good.  
  
This is _fine_.  
  
And then it’s _not_.  
  
It’s usually silent. He’s used to silent. But in the background he can hear someone’s car stereo. A faded memory over the sounds of Russian Conversation that he’s only paying attention to so he can discern which of the two is his target.  
  
There’s a beat.  
  
Two breaths and the man on the left scoffs.  
  
Bucky aims from his spot in the rafters, looking down a scope and with a muffled ‘pfft’ there’s a shower of blood and a scream.  
  
Whatever was playing, keeps going as pandemonium ensues. The body hits the ground with a dull sound and Bucky stills, becoming one with the shadows as he watches panic overtake the people remaining. He’s not here to kill _all_ of them. He had a target, the target is eliminated. Everyone else is free to go, he wishes they would stop making such a scene.  
  
For a brief, shining moment, the car stereo grows louder and closer, _”take it easy baby, make it last all night”_ and then it’s gone. They’re all gone. Well, except for the body.  
  
There’s a pool of blood surrounding it now and Bucky knows people will be here soon to take care of it, to take care of him.  
  
A shudder runs through him - he doesn’t want to go back under yet, he isn’t ready…  
  
“Bucky? Bucky?”  
  
There are hands on his face, warm hands and when his eyes refocus, it’s on-  
  
“Steve?”  
  
“Yeah… yeah it’s me, of course it’s me, hey…” Steve holds his face a little longer, waiting for something and he must find it because all too soon his hands drop away and Bucky lets out a long breath. “You okay?”  
  
“Yeah, I’m fine - I didn’t…” Bucky checks his surroundings but he didn’t even move - nothing’s destroyed … that’s new.  
  
“You just got donut-glazed and non-responsive,” Tony says, running a hand through his hair. He looks nervous - his hands twitching as if they don’t know where to go or what to do. An engineer without a problem to solve, he’s adrift. “I called Cap - thought he might know what was going on.”  
  
“Do you know what happened?” Steve asks.  
  
“I just… I guess I was day dreaming.”  
  
Steve looks like he maybe isn’t buying it, but he nods, patting Bucky on the shoulder and giving a squeeze before he’s jerking his head towards the door.  
  
“Come find me if you want to talk.”  
  
He leaves and it’s just Tony with him again. Tony taps a few keys at his console and clears his throat.  
  
“You can also talk to me if you want to.”  
  
Bucky glances up at him, but Tony is steadfastly focused on his machine.  
  
“It wasn’t the update,” Bucky says finally, reaching down and pulling the plugs out from between the armored plates and holding them out to Tony. “You didn’t do anything.”  
  
Tony’s shoulders relax a little and Bucky stands up, looking around in a fog. It’s not 1977 and he’s not the Winter Soldier.


	2. Last Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Specific Trigger Warnings for this Chapter: aside from the usual... Alexander Pierce and all that entails. Alcohol.

“Who decided this was a thing?”  
  
“What?”  
  
“Christmas in July - like when did this become Real? I hate it.”   
  
Sam laughs, head thrown back, slapping the table, “thank you God. Mark him down on my team and tell Rogers he’s been replaced as my favorite old person.”   
  
Natasha rolls her eyes and gives Bucky a look, “don’t get comfortable with your newest ranking, he changes that daily.”   
  
“Rude,” Sam says, picking up his drink and giving a little ‘cheers’ to Natasha with a wink. Natasha smiles back at him and Bucky stares down at his beer that he’s been carefully drinking in measured amounts to make it look like he’s a normal person and not an enhanced super soldier capable of drinking half the bar and feeling absolutely nothing for his trouble.   
  
Steve comes back with two beers and looks at Bucky before he awkwardly sits down with both glasses in front of him. Bucky looks down at his and then quickly lifts it to his lips, finishing it in a few short gulps.   
  
The chatter around him continues, Clint trying to decide if he wants to hustle anyone at darts while Natasha tries to dissuade him from the endeavour and Bucky just stares at Steve across the table. He’s looking down at his drink and rolling the pint glass carefully between his two palms, letting condensation roll down and puddle on the table.   
  
Steve’s face is different now - the cut of it filled out from the serum. He knew it from before obviously. Of the rescue that first time, of Steve there above him, the pinnacle of human perfection or what have you. But he remembers a time before that, of an even skinnier jaw line, a slender, fine neck … tiny, jutting shoulders that could barely carry a suit jacket let alone that shield.   
  
Bucky flicks his eyes up to find Steve watching him back, and on the exhale it’s all gone.   
  
It’s not a happy song, or a happy moment. Not how he remembers it.   
  
It also wasn’t summer. It was January, 1985.   
  
A jukebox riddled with bullet holes was still playing as shattered lamps swung overhead, still intent on lighting the scene below, just as the music played on, ever ignorant of the crisis at hand.   
  
Bucky is standing over a prone man’s body, his foot on the guy’s windpipe and a gun trained between his eyes.   
  
Alexander Pierce is asking questions.   
  
When the man says the right thing, he gets to take a breath, but when he says something that Pierce doesn’t want to hear, Bucky adds more pressure, feeling and hearing him choke on it.   
  
Pool balls thud off an overturned table making a very distinctive sound and Bucky breathes through it, blinking slowly, taking his cues from Pierce. Positive affirmation, give air; Negative pronouncement, take air. Theirs is a simple system but Bucky needs simple. There are decades of work in his head splintered by periods spent in cryo and things with depth seem too far out of reach.   
  
“Kill him.”   
  
Bucky pulls the trigger.   
  
The man might beg for his life. He might cry. He might scream. It’s all over in an instant and the gun doesn’t have a silencer so the sound is deafening. For a moment, it’s all he hears - the explosion of it and then the quiet sounds of the building settling around him. Of broken glass sifting, wood creaking, the sighs of destruction.   
  
_”my god I thought you were something to rely on, me I guess I was a shoulder to cry on”_  
  
Pierce shoves him towards the door and the night air hits him so hard in the face it’s like being slapped.   
  
“You’re done for now.”   
  
He’s been out a couple of weeks, he knew this was coming.   
  
Bucky hangs his head and nods.   
  
Cold. it’s … _cold_.   
  
He takes a deep, shuddery breath and Sam is holding a bottle of water to the back of his neck. Steve is in front of him, holding his hands over the table and gently rubbing circles with his thumbs along the insides of Bucky’s wrists - both metal and flesh.   
  
“You back?” Steve asks.   
  
Bucky blinks quickly and Sam takes the bottle away from his neck and sets it by his elbow.   
  
“Nat’s getting the car,” he says quietly, giving Bucky a reassuring pat on the shoulder, “we’re gonna head back to the tower - Clint will not be persuaded from darts so we thought it might be safer if he’s not doing it while hustling people out of cash.”   
  
Steve snorts and shakes his head, “he’s going to try and hustle _us_ out of cash.”   
  
“Well none of us will punch him for it,” Sam says with a knowing look. He slides out of the booth and Steve is there alone with him.   
  
“Are you alright? You were… you were here with us and then … suddenly you weren’t.” His voice is soft and careful and Bucky shrugs, helpless to explain.   
  
“It’s fine,” he says, “we can just go home, I’m kind of tired.”   
  
Clint waves at them from the door and Steve nods his head that direction, “come on, lets get you home.”   
  
There’s a final squeeze to his hands and Bucky follows.   
  
On his way out he looks at the jukebox, checks for bullet holes. 


	3. Non, je ne regrette rien

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey please read the full fic warnings. All of that with: talk about the Holocaust and things done during the Holocaust, smoking, blood, death.

“Last time I heard this, it was on vinyl in France,” Bucky says, casual as can be.  
  
The kid doing stock looks up at him almost adoringly. It sounds romantic - the idea of it, the theory. He gives a shy smile and catches Steve’s eyes over the low shelves.  
  
Montpellier, 1960.  
  
She’d been smoking Gauloises when he shot her through the balcony door. Broad daylight even - not his usual style, but needs must.  
  
56 years old, her blonde and grey hair perfectly coifed. The light pink satin nightgown and robe were artfully spread around her on the floor. Like a scene right out of some romance novel - well, except right now there’s blood all over the carpet, soaking into the hardwood.  
  
Bucky sighs, stepping over it and picking up the discarded pack of cigarettes. No sense letting luxuries like these go to waste.  
  
His current handler is sloppy. Fucking _Americans_. They always want to give him a little extra room.  
  
Gave him a two hour time frame to accomplish something that takes two minutes. Give a dog like that enough leash and they’ll hang themselves. Bucky gets bored easily, gets nervous when he doesn’t have a task - needs to have something to do with his hands. He showed up here thirty minutes ago and sat having an espresso in the fading daylight, waiting for the dumb bitch to show up just because he had time to kill and now he’s still got another hour and a half left.  
  
Still — one thing he _does_ like about the Americans - they like telling him stories. There’s no nameless and faceless targets here. They let him know why he’s killing someone - he supposes they want to fill him with some kind of righteous indignation, appeal to some kind of inbred patriotism that lurks there somewhere. It doesn’t matter to him one way or the other. He’s the Winter Soldier. He is a weapon, a tool - something to be picked up, pointed, and fired. He doesn’t need reasons. But he appreciates the effort, gives him something to turn over while he waits all that extra time…  
  
But this dame… he kind of likes knowing about her. She’s a former Nazi doctor, worked with Mengele, and she’s been living as some sort of grandma here in the south of France like she didn’t experiment on children 15 years ago and gas their parents.  
  
He’s seen some fucked up shit in his time, and fine, he’s _done_ some fucked up shit but even has limits… hell, he’s been the subject of experiments and he was a grown ass man and this cow—  
  
Bucky reaches for her expensive silver lighter, clicking it back over the flame, as the end of the cigarette glows red, his eyes narrowing.  
  
“They turned them into candles and soap,” Bucky says out loud, glaring down at her dead body. “Did you know about that?”  
  
He takes a long drag and taps the ash off into her face, standing up, using deft metal fingers to catch the record needle just before it scratches into the paper center of the record. Bucky resets it on the outer edge again, surveying the room.  
  
Fuck this whole thing anyways…  
  
Gauzy white curtains blow inward with the breeze from the ocean and he goes, standing in the frame of the double doors.  
  
_”non, je ne regrette rien; c’est payé, balayé, oublié, je me fous du passé"_  
  
When he was standing there, he remembered, suddenly, viscerally, the feeling of waking up on the table in the lab - of Steve standing over him and how badly he had wanted in that moment to be dead and waking up in heaven.  
  
For a moment, in that apartment overlooking the Mediterranean he hopes that if he’s ever allowed to die, this is what he wakes up to. And Steve would be at that table on the balcony, in any body he’s ever inhabited, calling Bucky a stupid jerk.  
  
_”Aujourd’hui ça commence avec toi”_  
  
There is an actual scratching of a record needle and Bucky is sitting down, heart pounding in his chest.  
  
The sales kid is nearby, hovering and holding a beat up land line phone and he’s talking but Bucky can’t understand him at all. Steve is shaking his head, kneeling in front of Bucky and holding his knees, just barely applying pressure, the gentlest touch.  
  
“Do you have a cigarette?” Bucky asks.  
  
Steve jerks his head back and looks at him, startled.  
  
“Do I — Jesus — no? I .. I had asthma—“  
  
“Okay well you don’t have asthma _now_ ,” Bucky says.  
  
Steve looks rattled, and he ducks his head, hands stilling on Bucky’s legs.  
  
“You want a smoke?” he asks, without looking up.  
  
“Kind of,” Bucky says quietly.  
  
There’s quiet and then the kid near them says, almost at  whisper, “I have some?”  
  
Steve lets all his air out in a rush and stands up, slowly, carefully, shaking his head, “yeah, can we have two and some matches?”  
  
The kid lets them slip out the back and they take a minute in the alley to light up, both of them. Bucky can’t stop himself from smiling.  
  
“Little Stevie Rogers havin’ a smoke, if your Ma could see you now she’d beat your ass,” he says, voice quiet.  
  
Steve pinks a little and chuckles, shrugging and taking a drag, “can’t let you have one alone.”  
  
“Them the rules?”  
  
“Yeah, something like that.”  
  
They lean back against the building, smoking in silence. It’s companionable, a little stilted, but Bucky can handle this.  
  
“Is it the music?” Steve asks, quietly, tapping ash off in a gutter.  
  
Bucky nods, looking away. This time the silence drags on and grates a little. He doesn’t know how to bridge this - it feels wide and deep and terrifying and he just wants to be swallowed up by it. He’s supposed to be getting better, not having violent flashbacks. He doesn’t want to go back under… he doesn’t want to _leave._  
  
When his cigarette burns down to the filter, he drops it and crushes it up under his heel, turning to Steve and jerking his head back towards the street, “feel like crepes?”

Ignore. Ignore, suppress. Ignore, suppress, fake it 'til you make it.


	4. Friends in Low Places

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warnings: Hey -- hey there's some blood in this it's not blood play as that would be sexualised and this isn't that but it's not just a passing "oh there's blood" mention either. ALCOHOL. PILLS! get hype.

“No one gets on my ass when I come here,” Clint says, pulling darts out of the board that he’s been using for the better part of the past half hour. He’s won about $75 and Bucky is starting to wonder when someone is going to wise up and call him on his shit but so far, no one is anything other than a fairly gracious loser.   
  
Bucky leans back against the wall and shakes his head, “do they just not know about it?”   
  
“Oh they know — well, Natasha knows, but she knows everything so there’s no point in pretending that I can keep secrets from her…”   
  
Bucky nods along and tips his beer back against his lips. He hadn’t told Steve where he was going tonight, just that he was heading out with Clint - he’d be back soon. Steve had given him a nervous once over but Bucky had halted any protests with a single hand in the air and a shake of his head. He was an adult, he could take care of himself - he needed to be able to do this without Steve hovering over him every second of the day worried he was going to be compromised at any second.   
  
Steve needed to have a life.   
  
One that wasn’t entirely Bucky-centric.   
  
Fuck he hates that thought. Bucky tips back his beer and swallows all of it in one go and then motions to the bar to let Clint know he was going for refills.   
  
“Can you grab me a beer?” Clint says, shaking his empty.   
  
“Got it,” Bucky says as he watches Clint reel in his newest victim.   
  
That gives him a few minutes then - he doesn’t like to hover when Clint is chatting people up to get them to gamble on him - looks suspicious as hell - so instead, Bucky goes to the bar and pulls out a bottle of advil, motioning to the bartender for a couple more beers.   
  
“Treating a headache with more beer? That’s my kind of man,” the guy says, laughing and handing Bucky back his change, “drink the pain away.”   
  
Bucky snorts, and just nods, glancing down at the little white pills and throwing them back with his IPA and just glances around the bar.   
  
They aren’t advil. They’re something he got in Wakanda that make him feel a little drunk but without the hangover and only a percentage of the half-life of a real bender. Two pills are good for a few hours of a light buzz and he could really use it right about now.   
  
His hyperawareness is always kind of a curse but sometimes it’s sort of hilarious in situations like this. It’s a Wednesday so the place isn’t overly crowded but just enough to keep things interesting.   
  
He watches the couples slow dancing playfully, college guys playing pool, a few girls celebrating a 21st birthday together in cowgirl hats and boots. He listens to them chanting ‘shots, shots, shots, shots’ and whooping when they finish, the clank of glasses on the table top a kind of final bell tolling success.   
  
“What is this fucking music,” Pierce rolls his eyes as Bucky looks up from where he’s standing against the wall, masked in shadow. It’s not a real question - Pierce doesn’t ask Bucky things that Bucky is supposed to answer. He’s impatient and their target is running an hour late. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s their target, he thinks he’s coming in to discuss a business deal - one that will make him a very rich and powerful man.   
  
They’re all like that.   
  
The next 2 minutes are a blur.   
  
Bucky settles into a kind of trance, just going over and over the mission details. Let him sit down, let him get through the pleasantries, let him give Alexander the information he needs. At the signal, eliminate him. It’s so easy anyone should be able to do it but there’s no one that Pierce can trust to do this efficiently and to insure that things don’t get ugly or messy. After all - there will be body guards perhaps, maybe private security?   
  
Bucky’s eyes flick up as the door opens and the man walks in. His detail stands outside, flanking the exit and Pierce stands, reaching out to shake his hand. Bucky sinks back into the shadows of the room and waits.   
  
Chairs scrape as they sit, and the two of them exchange the necessary pleasantries. Professional courtesy has to be observed, after all.   
  
Bucky doesn’t listen to the words coming out of their mouths, doesn’t pay much attention, just keeps his eyes trained to Pierce’s left hand. Waits for him to signal. Everything else is just… a background hum. His silenced gun is raised and aimed so that when Pierce signals, Bucky pulls the trigger with an emotionless twitch.   
  
Pierce shudders backwards and closes his eyes, opening them after a minute and glaring at Bucky from across the room as he reaches into his breast pocket, removing a handkerchief and delicately wiping the blood off of his face.   
  
“Can’t you do anything right?” He asks. “Such a fucking mess…. do you know how much this suit costs?”   
  
Bucky stands there, lowers his gun and waits, watching as Alexander gets up and comes around, hand dragging through the blood on the desk and then bringing it up to smear over Bucky’s face.   
  
“Go kill the fucking security so we can leave.”   
  
The command is hissed into Bucky’s face, the spit flecking into the newly laid blood and he steps out of the room, downing the two guards in quick succession. He stands there. Feet shoulder width apart, hands in front of him and clasped over his gun, waiting for Pierce to emerge.   
  
The music from the front of house bar filters back again and Bucky winces as there’s a light slap to his face.   
  
“Hey. HEY.”   
  
Bucky shakes his head and blinks at Clint.   
  
“Fuuuuuuck…..” Clint wheezes and leans forward, squeezing Bucky’s shoulder and patting his back. “He’s good guys - he’s chill - we’re cool.”   
  
“Sorry — sorry I just…” Bucky flounders helplessly for a moment and Clint shakes his head with a pointed look.   
  
“Iraq,” Clint says, nodding solemnly and the bartender just nods back. “Let’s go man - come on - I’ll get us a cab.”   
  
Clint makes a show of wrapping an arm around Bucky’s chest and pretending to help him stagger outside. A couple of guys give him a salute as they leave and one of the bouncers holds the door muttering a ‘thanks for your service’ that’s so earnest in its intensity that Bucky feels like throwing up.   
  
Clint gets them to a bench a couple of doors down and pulls out his phone as Bucky points to a passing cab.   
  
“Fuck that, man - I’m getting one of Tony’s cars. Ain’t no way we’re taking a cab after that - what the FUCK.” He’s not mad but he’s clearly panicked and Bucky covers his face with his hands and leans back shaking his head.   
  
“It’s fine — it’s the … it’s just a thing. Sometimes sounds or whatever just… it’s like they set me off and I remember shit that happened. Unpleasant shit and I kind of … shut down,” Bucky finishes lamely. “I didn’t hurt anyone, right?”   
  
“I mean the bartender thought you were having a stroke but like other than that no - no one was hurt,” Clint says, holding the phone to his ear and clearly talking to one of Tony’s on-call drivers and giving them their current address. When he hangs up he turns towards Bucky and puts a hand on his shoulder again, giving him a curious look.   
  
“Are you sure you’re okay - you were… Bucky it was like all the lights were on but no one was home - and you were out of it for like ten minutes.”   
  
“Ten— TEN MINUTES?!” Bucky stares and gapes, he was under the impression this was just a quick flashback and one and done and … fuck fuck.   
  
“I almost had to call Steve it was-“   
  
“Don’t. Don’t call Steve, don’t tell Steve - let me tell him.”   
  
Clint looks conflicted but shrugs, “yeah sure — whatever I guess. Just.. make sure you actually tell him okay? He really cares about you.”   
  
“I will.”   
  
And he actually does.   
  
When they get back to the tower he finds Steve back in his apartment watching Animal Planet. He stands back to let Bucky in and Bucky doesn’t let anything else happen before he says, “Friends in Low Places - Garth Brooks.”   
  
Steve looks stricken and all at once he’s grabbing Bucky at the shoulders, cupping his face like he’s a medic or some bullshit and Bucky holds his forearms and closes his eyes and waits for the panic to pass. But it’s not going anywhere. Steve is a string of questions - how long ago? where were you? who was with you? how long were you out? did anything happen? did you fall? did you hurt yourself? His hands are locked against the sides of Bucky’s neck and holding his head upright and Bucky just wants this to not be what causes Steve to care so suddenly and with such intense blinding certainty.   
  
“Hey — it’s fine, I’m fine,” Bucky says.   
  
“But this isn’t fine,” Steve says, “ten minutes? that’s … Bucky if you were alone…”   
  
“But I wasn’t!”   
  
Steve bundles him in close and Bucky immediately misses the feeling of Steve’s hands on his neck, even though they’re now rubbing at his back.   
  
“You wanna watch Too Cute! with me,” Steve asks, his voice muffled into Bucky’s shoulder.   
  
“What episode is it,” Bucky asks, patting Steve’s shoulder.   
  
“Ragdoll kittens,” Steve says.   
  
“Yeah, alright.”   
  
They stretch out on opposite ends of Steve’s couch, with Bucky’s feet tucked in against Steve’s thigh so he can lay down. He doesn’t mean to fall asleep, doesn’t mean to make it a thing.   
  
But it is.   
  
He wakes up the next morning early, maybe 4am, his and Steve’s legs tangled together in the middle of the couch - each of them with their own arm of the sofa. There’s a blanket over where they’re wrapped together and Bucky thinks about running away from this.   
  
It’s in character, isn’t it? Get up, disappear in the middle of the night. Slip out like he was never even there, that this was all just a hallucination. That’s what he does, right? Ghost story or whatever. Bucky is a liminal space. Existing and not existing at the whim of other people’s imaginations and indulgent wishes and for the first time he gives in to what he wants and rolls a little, getting comfortable and dragging a second throw pillow over his face.   
  
Fuck leaving.   
  
He goes right back to sleep and thinks about how much he hates country music, but how much he really loves how warm Steve Rogers is.


	5. Starman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional warnings for this unless you're offended by space history. In which case leave.

November 15, 1988   
  
It's one of the few exact dates he can remember. Typically it's a month and a year, or a year or a season, or something but this, this he remembers everything. He had to hike into the site and perhaps he had liberated a walkman off someone between points A and B but that was no one's business but his own. This was going to be a lot of waiting around and patience and he was in it for the long game.   
  
"Can I stop you there?" Bucky looks up and Steve is standing there, silhouetted against the snow. The lights illuminating the launch site glow bright behind him, turning him into shadow and making his hair glow like a halo around his head.  
  
"Hm?"   
  
"Instead of the ... well instead of the killing..." Steve trails off uncomfortably and steps gingerly over the snowy drifts and settles next to Bucky on the couch, "what happened before that?"   
  
"Buran," Bucky says simply. He's motioning across the room, expansively, as if Steve can see it too - because it's still so vivid to Bucky, it's like he's living this all over again and he wishes he could make Steve see it too. For all the pain and disaster and death and heartache, this was something he could recall with perfect clarity that brought him peace. "I wish you had been there."   
  
Steve is watching him. Bucky can just tell - can feel the weight of his stare as he traces the contours of his face and body, tries to make sense out of this limbo and chaos that they’re both in together. Steve’s hands flex and he looks away before he reaches under the coffee table, pulling out a sketch pad and charcoals and smiles, inviting Bucky in, "tell me everything."   
  
Bucky blinks away the snowflakes catching in his lashes and looks over at Steve.   
  
“Yeah… yeah.” And so he begins.   
  
It was Russia's answer to the space shuttle, and they had blatantly ripped off the design - but they acknowledged that. No one cared, right? This is post-Sputnik but pre-end of the Cold War. Still… the Americans had what amounted to a space plane, which took reusable space flight to another level. Not just pods like Apollo and Mercury or Gemini — no, the Space Shuttle was the Concorde of space travel. The Russians were eager to match it, maybe they had something to prove, maybe they had some nefarious plan… who the fuck knows. The point was - this was a moment in science and space history for them.   
  
Buran. It means snowstorm and that space ship - it’s an orbiter - it embodied everything to the scientists working on the project. It was hope, advancement, technological superiority ... and because the Russians had taken some time to catch up to the Americans, they got to learn from the American's mistakes and make some changes and upgrades. Not just to the orbiter but to the launch system too. Buran had on board thrust capacity and fuel which the Americans didn’t have. So while their shuttles fell to earth like aerodynamic bricks, Buran was designed to be able to make trajectory corrections.   
  
Fuck it was _perfect_. It was so perfect and _beautiful._  
  
There it was, bathed in light on the launchpad at the Baikonur Cosmodrome — what a name, right? So dramatic… and Buran was strapped to the Energia booster. It was a heavy lift launch vehicle and probably one of the most powerful they had built up to that time.. She was a sight. Lit up against the sky, the steel trellis around her falling away as Energia came to life like a fireball into the low cloud ceiling.   
  
You know what it sounds like when those things go up? Like a bomb going off - like a sustained missile blast - it will shake the clothing on your body and rattle the teeth right out of your head.   
  
The most amazing part was that the entire launch, orbit and landing was automated and unmanned. Something even the Americans hadn’t done.  
  
Two orbits around the earth, and then a perfect landing despite 61.2 kilometer per hour cross winds. All automated. All of it. It was surreal being there.   
  
"I sat in the snow and watched one of the greatest accomplishments in Soviet history come to life... a fucking rocket and it wasn't a bomb or anything like that - they were using it for good, I guess."   
  
Steve’s hand stills on the paper and he looks at Bucky, the two of them staring at one another.   
  
Bucky takes a slow, deep breath and scrapes his teeth over his bottom lip.   
  
"Starman by David Bowie... I listened to it while the launch countdown was happening... I can't believe I forgot that."   
  
Bucky blinks and the snow fades into the soft tones of Steve's apartment.   
  
"I killed the scientists."   
  
Steve pauses where he's shading something, looking between Bucky and his cell phone, finally settling on Bucky.   
  
"But you saw the only launch of the Soviet Space Shuttle in history, that's amazing Bucky."   
  
"You can watch it on Youtube now - it's not a big deal anymore--"   
  
Steve shakes his head, "you were there. It's different being there. You know that. You know that."   
  
It is on Youtube. Bucky pulls it up and watches it with Steve on the television, telling him what it looked like from the angle he was at. How he could feel the heat he was so close. It felt like he might go blind from how bright it was. They google pictures and Steve puts on new Bowie instead because Bucky hasn’t heard it and what he doesn’t know can’t hurt him.  
  
And that all makes Bucky feel far gone for different reasons.   
  
"Blackstar was a hard album to take in," Steve says, offhandedly.   
  
Bucky looks up at him, arching an eyebrow.  
  
"I was just starting to get into his stuff and then he died," Steve says, his brow furrowing, "then this came out right after that and it was ... people had decades to enjoy his music and were so attached to him and his persona and were really devastated... so I don't know why I felt cheated."   
  
"Probably because you had just found him. You were expecting to have that same feeling a lot longer than you got to," Bucky says, leaning back and letting the music wash over him. Steve's apartment has so much natural light in it - windows everywhere, floor to ceiling - and when the curtains are open, the sun blazes in and sets the entire room on fire.   
  
Like a cat, delighted to find that every one of his favorite spots is the one dripping in late afternoon sun, Bucky is drawn to it, helplessly. He lets Steve arrange his limbs so they can comfortably lay there together, and maybe he lets his mind wander. Because this is what they used to do before the war, lay around and listen to the radio while Steve sketched and Bucky slept off whatever he’d gotten into the night before. Usually a double shift.   
  
And maybe some things change - like the Cold War ending, and Buran being cancelled, but some things stay the same. He’s still laying here on the couch with Steve, sleeping it off, listening to music. 100 fucking years … he’s a little angry that Steve got to sleep off 70 of those while Bucky had to work through them but knowing he had to earn this makes it that much better in a way.   
  
Bucky stretches, luxuriating back into the cushions and closing his eyes just for a moment, listening to the music, listening to the scratch of Steve's pencils or whatever it is he's using on textured paper and everything else fades out as the back of his eyelids glow orange as Energia.   
  
_Something happened on the day he died._  
 _Spirit rose a metre and stepped aside_  
 _Somebody else took his place, and bravely cried:_  
 _I'm a Blackstar, I'm a Blackstar_


	6. Oxford Comma

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No additional warnings for this chapter!

“I don’t know if I want to tell anyone else,” Bucky says, his face contorting into something between a grimace and a snarl.   
  
Steve sighs, “we don’t have to tell everyone, lets just - look he just has a lot of experience when it comes to PTSD and—”   
  
“He told the entire world he was Iron Man.”   
  
Steve nods but pinches the bridge of his nose like this is straining him, “but that was his own secret - he wouldn’t do that with something of private about you - that’s what I’m getting at.”   
  
It’s four hours later when Tony swivels around on his workshop stool and pushes his safety googles up his face saying, “I’m not a neuroscientist or psychotherapist.”   
  
“You weren’t a cardiothoracic surgeon either but you somehow managed just fine,” Steve points out.   
  
“Was he always this sassy?” Tony asks Bucky, “or is this just a modern day development?”   
  
“He was worse, he’s toned it down over the years,” Bucky says mildly, crossing his arms over his chest. Steve gives him a pout and Bucky just shrugs, “do _not._ ”   
  
“Huh,” Tony jots something down on his tablet and then rubs his hands together. “Well, listen maybe we can get you a life alert button—“   
  
“ _Tony_ …” Steve groans and Bucky laughs, pulling up another stool and pushing it so he wheels over and slides to a stop next to Tony.   
  
“Good," Bucky grins.   
  
Steve wrinkles his nose at them both and Bucky perches his chin on his hand, giving Tony an amused look, “I need to be busy with something - can I work down here for a bit? Help out? Get out of Steve’s way?”   
  
“Bucky you aren’t in my way—“   
  
“Sure!” Tony stands up to go retrieve a tool kit and what looks like a very tiny helicopter. “Drone - we’re going to dismantle it and—“   
  
“I’m going to be honest, whatever words come out of your mouth next I will fully understand but will most likely ignore and not be able to repeat back to you later.”   
  
“That’s fine, I just like hearing the sound of my own voice,” Tony says, slapping Bucky on the shoulder. He pulls his own stool back up to his work station where he seems to be looking through some kind of complicated schematics.   
  
Steve shuffles his feet and Tony looks up at him, “did you want to be put to work too?   
  
“No! I just… _no_.” Steve shrugs helplessly and looks between Bucky and Tony before he sighs and then motions towards the exit. He hesitates again and then lets himself out quietly when neither Tony or Bucky make a move to stop him.   
  
“He always like that?” Tony asks, flicking through a projected 3D rendering.   
  
“Like what?”   
  
“Kicked puppy.”   
  
Bucky hums to himself and sets another tiny screw aside, “sometimes. I don’t…” he hedges and then shrugs it off, “I used to live in that guy’s pint sized pocket, you know? He pulls the same faces, same attitudes, but he’s about 6’2 now and a brick house and I spent the last 70 years killing people in between induced comas. Maybe I forgot how to read him - or maybe he’s hiding something, not sure.” He fiddles with the little screw driver and then lines it up with the next screw.   
  
“What do you think he’s hiding?” Tony asks.   
  
“Ask the Black Widow - I don’t do intel gathering - I’m just wet works.”   
  
They're quiet for awhile as Bucky turns the drone over in his hands a few times, trying to figure out the best way to go about taking the intricate little thing apart. He's fairly sure that Tony could have one of his robots do this a lot faster... which makes him chuckle a little because right now he _is_ one of Tony's robots.  
  
"You mind if I put some music on?"  
  
"Yeah sure," Bucky says, noncommittally as he picks one of the dainty screwdrivers and starts with the rotors and blades.  
  
"What do you listen to?" Tony asks, pulling up a new screen, fingers hovering as he waits for a response.  
  
Bucky glances up at him, "like what music do I listen to when I have a choice and I'm not being forced to relive violent memories?"  
  
"Yeah, something like that," Tony shrugs.  
  
"Eh. Beyonce, Vampire Weekend, Drake, MGMT, Lorde..." Bucky rattles off, "and then some stuff you've probably never heard of."  
  
Tony narrows his eyes, "did you just hipster me."  
  
Bucky smirks.  
  
"You just hipstered me. I cannot _fucking_ believe this," Tony spins back to his diagram, "who taught you about hipsters because I know it wasn't Rogers."  
  
"You don't know that - Steve might be a huge hipster," Bucky says teasingly.  
  
"Uh, I have access to his Stark phone, I know what he listens to and it's not hipster crap, Barnes."  
  
Bucky laughs, "and you don't have access to mine?"  
  
"No, and you _know_ that you little shit," Tony hisses.  
  
Bucky laughs harder and twists out a couple more screws, setting them aside, "Ned and MJ."  
  
"UGH _those two_."  
  
"I love them," Bucky says, voice fake tight as he laughs through it.  
  
"Of course you would - they're goddamn trouble makers. I swear, Peter is like 25% problem child but like, his heart is in the right place?" Tony stands up and walks away to rifle through some drawers, "but you put him with either one of them, and all the sudden he is 80% asshole."  
  
"I know - I know that's why I like them so much, the three of them -- they're so good, they're like me and Stevie growing up," Bucky chuckles and Tony groans.  
  
"I'm so fucking glad I didn't know you two when you were younger - you cause me enough trouble as grown ass men."  
  
"Aw, Anthony, you don't mean that," Bucky says, not even looking up from what he's doing, "you love our trouble."  
  
"Do I?" Tony asks over his shoulder, "I could have sworn otherwise..."  
  
"Your life was so boring before you adopted two old people and like, a dozen misfits," Bucky says with a grin, "taking care of us is so much better than being a -- what was the quote--"  
  
"-- don't you _dare_ \--"  
  
"-- genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist?"  
  
"OH my god..."  
  
Tony throws a roll of shop towels at him and Bucky just neatly dodges, not even having to look up to keep it from hitting him square in the face.  
  
"FRIDAY - take a note, go back to monitoring the Winter Soldier's phone please?"  
  
"Honestly, such an overreaction."  
  
Tony shakes his head and sits back down, shaking a wrench in Bucky's direction, "you and Rogers - _together?_ \- you are trouble. I'm not saying I don't like that, but just be aware of what you are."  
  
Bucky shrugs, feigning innocence because he can. "Seems fake, but okay."  
  
"Jesus Christ..." Tony sighs and hits play.

 

  
  
 _"Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma?"_


	7. Keep It Comin' Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: recreational drug use mention, the violence is back, mob/mafia mention.

Maria Hill is directly responsible for this.   
  
She’s the only one who likes disco.   
  
Bucky is laying face down on the floor in the gym underneath the heavy bag when he wakes up and Steve is crouched over him, almost in tears.   
  
“You _know_ I can’t die, right?”   
  
“Of course you can die you _jerk_ -“   
  
“Okay but a heavy bag isn’t—“   
  
Steve takes a shuddering breath as he half suffocates Bucky into his chest, clawing at his back and holding him.   
  
“I’m not worried about the heavy bag I’m worried about everything else. You— you’re _not_ …” Steve trails off trying to even out his breathing and buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder.   
  
Bucky pats his back, feeling awkward and exposed, sitting in the middle of the gym floor and having this fucking heart to heart moment.   
  
“Steve it’s —it’s fine it was just disco.”   
  
Steve sits back and looks at him and Bucky shrugs and then motions to the ceiling, “It came on when I requested whatever was played last and … well you know how the rest goes.”   
  
“It feels like you’re tempting fate on purpose,” Steve says, holding Bucky at arm’s length.   
  
“It’s not a big deal.”   
  
“Tony said to write down what song was playing…”   
  
“Keep it Comin’ Love by KC and the Sunshine Band,” Bucky says with an eye roll. Steve, ever the boy scout, takes out his phone and makes a note before he clicks it off and they sit there in silence. Steve is rattled, his breathing still heavy and uneven and Bucky wants to hold him and tell him everything is going to be okay but a) that’s a lie and b) Steve isn’t stupid.   
  
“Tell me - tell me what … what did you remember?” Steve asks, quietly.   
  
Bucky lets all his air out in a rush. “Steve you aren’t going to like it.”   
  
“I don’t care, I want to know.”   
  
Which is so like him, isn’t it? Damn the consequences, I’m here, tell me what I want to know whether or not I’m going to enjoy it. I can handle it, I’m Steve fucking Rogers, I can do anything, put me in Lieutenant.   
  
“I shot some guys in the back of a club in Moscow in ’76.”   
  
“Some guys?”   
  
“ _Okay_ they were _some_ of the top mafia hit men in the Russian mob at the time and I killed them.”   
  
Steve’s lips thin into a hard line and Bucky slumps, “I don’t do intel - I’m just wet works. I don’t know much about them - really, Stevie - I showed up, I matched their faces with the headshot I was given and I dropped in out of an air duct and blew their faces off. K.C. and the Sunshine Band was playing as I holstered my gun and did some coke off the table — my handler picked me up about five minutes later and beat me senseless in the back of a van.”   
  
“Buck-“   
  
Steve’s hands are on his shoulders and Bucky sighs, “I didn’t want to make this into some big thing.”   
  
“You’re remembering… that’s kind of a big deal.” His thumbs stroke along the dip of Bucky’s muscles. He can feel it on the right side and by process of elimination he knows it’s happening on the left.   
  
“Against my will - you think I _want_ to remember these things?” Bucky says after a moment, leaning more into Steve’s touch.   
  
“No. But I’m hoping maybe if you remember this … you’ll remember good stuff too.” Steve’s fingers dig a little and Bucky wants it to be something but he’s scared that it’s not.   
  
“What _good stuff_?” Pierce asks, leaning against the wall and looking at Bucky curiously. “You never did any _good stuff_.”   
  
“I—“ Bucky shoves back from Steve and blinks into the empty room, focusing back on Steve’s face and seeing his soft smile like it’s the first time all over again.   
  
“You’re a hell of an optimist, Rogers,” Bucky says, looking down and shaking his head.   
  
“Yeah, I get that a lot,” Steve replies. “Something about always seeing the best in people - blah blah blah. Good thing you also know what a little shit I am.”   
  
Bucky smiles and looks back to where Pierce was, checking to make sure he’s not really there. “Yeah, saves me a lot of heartache later on.”   
  
Steve helps Bucky get his footing and then steers them both back to the elevator. “Naked and Afraid is on - I know how much you like nitpicking survivalists.”   
  
Bucky huffs out a sigh, “it’s not my fault they fucking suck at knowing how to take care of themselves and I just happen to be better at it.”   
  
Steve grins, letting them both into his apartment and motioning Bucky in first, “yeah yeah, Mr. Expert-At-Everything, I know how this is gonna go - you want popcorn or kettle corn?”   
  
“Kettle corn,” Bucky calls, already throwing himself onto the couch and making a nest of pillows and blankets so he can settle in for the duration. This is never a single episode kind of thing, they always have to watch two or three so Bucky can really get in the zone of critiquing.   
  
Steve comes over and instead of taking the opposite end of the couch, he crowds in against Bucky, dislodging some of the blankets until he’s comfortably squared away. He ends up with Bucky half on his lap and Bucky tightens up for a minute and tries to fire several neurons at one time to make sense of this but finally gives up rational thought because there’s kettle corn being shoved at him fresh out of the microwave and Steve is adding several degrees of warmth to this situation that Bucky didn’t know he wanted until he had it.   
  
Bucky watches as Steve takes the remote and hits select and the TV comes to life across the room. They’re introducing this week’s victims and Bucky is more concerned about the way that Steve’s arm is casually slung across the back of the couch and how in another universe this is _cuddling._   
  
“No comment on the ‘frat boy’ who says his hobbies include survival camping and binge drinking?” Steve says, fingers teasing through Bucky’s hair.   
  
“I was working up to it,” Bucky says, glancing over at Steve and holding his gaze for just a moment too long. He starts to ask if this is a date, or if this is more than Just Friends… or even if this is — _fuck it._ Fuck it who cares about thinking.   
  
Bucky _leans in_ both in the metaphorical and literal sense, relaxing into Steve’s chest and dragging the kettle corn onto his stomach so it doesn’t have to travel as far.  
  
“He’s going to tap out first, did you see what survival item he picked?” Bucky says, shoveling a handful of popcorn into his mouth.   
  
Steve chuckles and the best part about that is that he’s happy - but that Bucky can _feel_ it. That it isn’t just a sound or a look across the room, it’s reverberating through his back where that's pressed to Steve's chest and he can’t help but smile too.   
  
“You wouldn’t pick a fire starter?” Steve asks.   
  
“No. Machete. _Obviously._ ”   
  
“Oh, _obviously.”_   
  



	8. Touch the Sky

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: artificial arm surgery, hurt/comfort?, no blood and gore - just talk of pain and pain management, non-hospital setting - in a lab.

Ice Ice Baby is playing when Bucky walks in and it takes a second before he’s full on glaring at Tony Stark as Tony looks at him hopefully. The hope soon turns to dismay, then turns to sadness and then discomfort as Bucky’s unnerving, unblinking stare never waivers.   
  
“No… no you’re right - HYDRA weren’t exactly _known_ for their sense of humor I just — it was really popular in the 90s and…. right.” Tony flips the track over to some older Kanye and Bucky doesn’t break his stare as he pulls a stool out and swivels close to Tony.   
  
“What are we going to work on today?”   
  
Tony jumps, just a little and pats Bucky’s arm, “actually... if you're okay with it.... this hunk of junk. Shuri sent over the prototype she was working on in Wakanda because she’s so far ahead of me in terms of this kind of thing it would be stupid not to … _listen_ she’s the brightest star in the science sky, let’s put it that way.”   
  
Tony stands up and waves Bucky over to where there’s a Wakandan shipping container on the other side of the room, along with several different diagnostics pieces, a couple of gurneys, and tools.   
  
“She couldn’t come with it?” Bucky asks, frowning.   
  
“She could.”   
  
Bucky turns,  and a smile cracks across his face as he holds his arms open and waits for Shuri to run into them.   
  
“You are a little _shit,_ ” he mutters, hugging her to his chest and patting her between the shoulders, “Steve will be so happy to know that hasn’t changed one bit.”   
  
Shuri grins and takes a dramatic, mocking bow before she straightens up and smiles at Bucky and then at Tony, “I can’t stay long, I’ve got at least a dozen things at home I’m working on right now — not to mention the Oakland STEM project….” she’s practically buzzing and Tony beams.   
  
“Hey hey — you promised me you’d let me in on the ground floor of the Oakland thing! I want to donate some of my old tech for the making/tinkering space,” he says, looking like he’s about to go box the shit up right then and there. Shuri is laughing at him and rolling her eyes, making a shooing motion.   
  
“I haven’t gotten that far yet Stark, we’re still building the site — when we get to Phase II you’ll be the second person I call.” She’s got a smug glimmer in her eyes and Tony grasps at his chest, feigning offense.   
  
“Second!? _Shuri_!”   
  
“I promised Peter, Ned and MJ they could come see it all first,” Shuri shrugs, “now, are you going to fuss or are you going to help me with this - I want to show you everything that way you can do updates and maintenance when I’m not here.”   
  
Bucky watches the two of them bounce back and forth like it’s a ping-pong match and he can’t help the fond smile on his face. He loves everyone in this bar. Tony is … something else, but Shuri is the little sister he lost and he fucking loves her brilliance and her absolutely razor sharp wit.   
  
“So, first thing’s first,” Shuri says, “deactivating the old tech.” She puts her hand on Bucky’s flesh one and gives him a serious look, “it could be very painful Bucky - but you never liked being on any kind of anesthetic… you’ll have to let us know if it becomes too much for you.”  
  
“I’ve got some high grade stuff on standby,” Tony adds, suddenly serious as he mimics Shuri’s touch on Bucky’s metal hand, “we tested it on Thor and Steve a couple of times so we know it’ll work with your physiology - painkillers mostly… so don’t uh…. don’t tough it out, soldier.”   
  
“Let’s do it,” Bucky says, nodding. He gives the two of them a crooked smile, “I trust you guys.”   
  
He’s so busy paying attention to Shuri and Tony bantering back and forth in technical jargon that he misses the sound of the doors opening across the room, but there’s suddenly footsteps and he can’t sit up to see which starts to make him panic until Tony catches the uptick on the heart monitor and pats his metal shoulder.   
  
“Hey Cap, come on over, pull a chair up by his right side.”   
  
And just like that, Bucky’s heart rate ratchets down again and Steve swims into his peripheral vision, the sound of squeaking wheels against the concrete floor, and then Steve’s hands are on the table, one flicking playfully at Bucky’s ear.   
  
“Hey asshole,” Steve says.   
  
“Hey fuckboy,” Bucky replies.   
  
Shuri giggles and Tony snorts. “Where did you learn that one from?”   
  
“Parker,” Bucky says.   
  
Tony gasps, “my sweet protege does not swear like a dockworker!”   
  
“Yes he _does,_ ” Bucky and Shuri say in unison.   
  
Tony grumbles, “FRIDAY - make a note for me to talk to Peter about his language.”   
  
“Noted, Mr. Stark.”   
  
“I feel sorry for that kid,” Steve says, perching his chin on his folded hands, “growing up around here has to be like having 20 parents or something.”   
  
“Oh please,” Bucky says, “you _needed_ 20 parents, I could barely keep you in one piece half the time and that was with both our Ma’s and — _FUCK_!”   
  
“Sorry!” Shuri gives Bucky a sympathetic face, but doesn’t stop, she’s obviously in the process of disabling the interior power source judging by the pop up display in front of her but what that translates to for Bucky is like someone shoving his arm in an electrical socket that’s being powered by Thor.   
  
Bucky makes a growling sound and grits his teeth and Steve sits up, hands fluttering uselessly before one is pushing hair out of Bucky’s face and the other is grabbing for his right hand.   
  
“This part shouldn’t last much longer,” Shuri assures them, “countdown 2 minutes - do you want a mouth guard, Bucky?”   
  
Bucky shakes his head and Steve perches his head down, laying it next to Bucky's ear so that only he can hear and whispers, "if that frat guy can survive the Amazon, you can survive this."  
  
Bucky barks out a pained laugh and reaches back with his good hand, grabbing the back of Steve's neck and squeezing. "He quit!" Bucky grits out.  
  
"And that's how I know you won't," Steve says, matter-of-factly. He's right, the son of a bitch. Bucky grunts and keeps his left arm perfectly still, scrabbling at Steve on the right as Steve says ' _breathe, breathe breathe'_ over and over again.  
  
Tony puts his hands under the arm as Shuri counts down from ten aloud, the two of them watching until it hits zero and the mechanical limb goes carefully, blessedly, silent.  
  
Bucky is almost hyperventilating, the room swimming in front of him as Steve shushes him, combing sweaty hair back out of his face.  
  
"Alright, James?" Shuri asks, running her hand along the seam of his arm and checking for the release points.  
  
"Yeah," his voice is shaky and he just wants this to be over already. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he should ask to stop but if he does that then this is just going to keep going even longer. "Let's do this."  
  
Her fingers catch on the latches and she nods to Tony, "here it goes."  
  
Bucky closes his eyes and turns his face into Steve's gritting his teeth. The majority of the arm falls away, right into Tony's hands as Bucky muffles a shout, twisting away from the exoskeleton as wires dangle off the table, draped over Bucky's body. They still have feeling in them and he wants to scream as Shuri carefully wraps them in something that makes them go suddenly numb.  
  
Everyone is quiet for a minute, Bucky gasping for air as Steve presses their foreheads together and pets him. It's soothing - both the action and the proximity and Bucky just drifts there for a minute - unmoving and unhearing, letting it wash over him. He can do this. He did it before - in Wakanda - when they took the arm off to cryo him and help take the winter soldier out of his head. Shuri had put it back on him with some adjustments so that later she'd be able to fully replace it with Wakandan technology... that had been a long and painful surgery and this should just be swapping prosthetics out and connecting artificial neurons. Of course the pain was all in severing the connections to the artificial nerves and pathways that had been built... God... _God_ he wanted this over.  
  
"I want it to stop," he breathes out.  
  
"We can stop right now," Steve says, tightening his grip.  
  
"Why don't we -- can you hold him?" Tony asks, pushing his hair out of his face and looking worried. He's got that nervous tic in his face and he's chewing his lip and Bucky knows he just wants to help. "Rogers, hop -- here --" Tony wheels over a second gurney and has Steve jump onto it, arranges him around and then looks back over at Bucky, "now sit in his lap."  
  
Steve's brow furrows, but Tony cuts him off, "I want you to hold him - he needs to be still for the next part, and he needs to be calm and I don't want to -- _we_ \--" Tony motions between himself and Shuri, "don't want to restrain him."  
  
Steve nods, gets comfortable and waits. Tony and Shuri guide Bucky over and help him up onto the second bed, letting him lean back into Steve, as they arrange the monitors again and get the second round of the procedure set up.

  
“Do you want a mild sedative?” Shuri asks, “not enough to knock you out but just something to make it less ....tense?”   
  
She looks nervous and worried and Bucky loves her to pieces, because he was her pet project in Wakanda. She wanted to make him better and saw the best in him and he respects her so fucking much. He’s told T’Challa on multiple occasions how lucky he is to have a sister so bright, and all T’Challa does is smile and nod, look away and say he is the luckiest man in the world.   
  
“I’ll be right here,” Steve says, giving him a squeeze, “nothing's gonna happen.”   
  
Tony nods, “and I have a suit on standby in case of the worst and Dum-E is recording so that you can watch all this later and see every single thing we did.”   
  
Shuri nods, and Bucky nods back. He can't believe they did this - that they know what he's afraid of, that they prepared for all of it, to make sure he felt safe.  
  
He doesn’t remember much after that. They hook him up to an IV and Steve tucks Bucky's head under his chin and Bucky whimpers. He doesn’t want this, but he does - and he hates being weak in front of people, but right now he has to be.   
  
Steve’s arms wrap around him and Bucky leans back into him, trying to match his breathing to Steve’s. Deep and even.   
  
That’s what he remembers. Tony and Shuri working fast and careful. Their gentle touches. And Steve. _Just Steve_. The way he smells, the way his shirt feels against Bucky’s bare skin, the way his heartbeat somehow stays even and solid through it all.   
  
Bucky drifts until the new arm is attached and they have to sync it up to his nervous system.   
  
He’s awake, then, but far gone. He lets Steve tether him.   
  
And when it’s done, Steve carries him up to his apartment and lays him down on the couch, keeping the curtains closed, drawing a blanket up over them and turning on Blue Planet.   
  
“You can stop holding me now,” Bucky slurs, face shoved half in Steve’s bicep and half in a pillow.

There's a moment where all Steve does is hold him closer, and then he's whispering again, making sure just Bucky hears him.  
  
“I don’t want to."  
  



	9. Sh-Boom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: we are back with the blood and murder this chapter, some suicidal thoughts or ideation/near death experience but not actual suicide attempts, descriptions of violence

Children’s movies should be safe but they’re _not_ and Bucky is pretty livid about that. Then again he didn’t want to watch this fucking movie to begin with so he fully blames Peter, MJ, and Ned for this one.   
  
They said it was essential watching for all Disney fans and Bucky had actually _believed_ them. I mean, sincerely, they had been correct about a lot of other choices like Toy Story 1-3, Princess and the Frog, Brave, Mulan… but he was going to have words with them about this one.   
  
“Mr. Rogers _look_ I’m really—“   
  
“You call him _Mr. Rogers_?” MJ asks, flipping over so she can give Peter an incredulous look.   
  
“That’s his _name_ ,” Peter says, voice strained.   
  
“Dude, he’s Captain America, call him Mr. America,” Ned corrects, stage whispering.   
  
"I think at that point you'd call him Captain," MJ says, "you'd go by military title."   
  
"He didn't even _earn_ that though..." Ned points out quietly.  
  
“Just call him Steve,” Bucky says, voice hazy as he sits up from where he was slumped over on the floor, propping himself on his elbows and giving the three Gen Z kids a little bit of a scare as they all visually recoil from him. “Do I look that bad?”   
  
“No, we just-“ Peter starts, but Steve cuts him off.   
  
“They thought you were having a heart attack, _Bucky_ ,” Steve hisses.   
  
Bucky rolls his eyes, “I don’t think I can have a heart attack. This is all just fear mongering on Steve’s part - I’m actually very sturdy.”   
  
“Sorry Mr. Barnes it’s just that-“   
  
“At least he’s not calling you Mr. The Winter Soldier anymore,” Steve mutters darkly.  
  
“That was _one time_! I thought that was his title I didn’t-“   
  
“Call me Bucky.”   
  
“Sorry, _Bucky_ , he told us if anything happened to call him immediately because it was probably a medical emergency and I thought he was joking but like, Captain America wouldn’t joke right? But I—“   
  
Bucky rolls his eyes and puts a hand up to silence Peter, “you’re fine, kid - you did the right thing, Steve just likes to overreact, isn’t that right _Stevie_?”   
  
Steve narrows his eyes at Bucky but Bucky doesn’t back down, instead glaring all the harder for it and the two of them are locked in this with neither one willing to back down or crack.   
  
“Are you guys gonna make out?” MJ asks, shoving a handful of popcorn in her mouth.   
  
“Oh my _God_ ,” Peter wheezes out just as Steve starts to turn red and jerks back to look at them and Bucky shoves him so he overbalances and falls on his ass.   
  
“You owe me a coke,” Bucky says triumphantly, standing up and using Steve to lever himself to standing, keeping him down on the ground in the process.   
  
“They really are 100 years old, wow oh my god WOW,” Ned says, voice reverent and disbelieving.   
  
Steve just sighs and takes Bucky’s offered hand, “I feel like that was cheating, how do I know you didn’t pay MJ off to get her to help you. That was subterfuge…”   
  
“Was it?” Bucky asks innocently. He shrugs as lighthearted as he can make it and crosses his arms over his chest, “cheating would have been actually kissing you.”   
  
Steve looks stunned for all of a second before he recovers and shoves Bucky’s shoulder, “you’d have to stop staring at me and you’d lose.”   
  
“You think I can’t keep my eyes open that long?” Bucky challenges.   
  
“Is this going to turn into gay chicken?” MJ asks.   
  
Bucky and Steve both turn to look at her curiously as Ned and Peter both try and shout things to change the subject. Among them are _‘ignore her’_ and _‘did you want to finish the movie’_ and _‘did you know there are sequels’_ and _‘wow Steve can you tell us about **America**???’_  
  
It’s absurd and wholesome and Bucky smirks a little because he misses this. It’s like a very young, very naive version of the Howling Commandos and he loves these stupid fucking children so much. He forgets what it was like ever being that age sometimes but the way they bicker and yell back and forth and just take each other out at the knees reminds him. He gives Steve a soft sideways glance and Steve ducks his head looking shy.   
  
They were 17 once.   
  
He and Steve let themselves out as Ned tries to break up a theoretical argument between MJ and Peter and Bucky doesn’t notice that he’s following Steve back to his apartment until Steve is holding the door open for him, natural as you please and going to get both of them a glass of something.   
  
It’s water but Bucky wants to pretend it’s vodka. He wants to get drunk and forget. Wants to be out of his head for ten minutes and wants Steve to go with him.   
  
“Well?” Steve presses the glass of water into Bucky’s hands and raises an eyebrow.   
  
Bucky sighs, “Sh-Boom, The Crew Cuts.”   
  
Steve, who is drinking his own water, hesitates and then sets the glass down giving Bucky a look.   
  
“I thought you were watching _Cars_.”   
  
“We were.”   
  
Steve looks confused and Bucky huffs, “it’s — the part with Radiator Springs? When he finishes paving the road?”   
  
“Oh my God.”   
  
Steve looks torn between laughing and crying and Bucky shoulders past him, slumping down on the couch and grabbing the tv remote, pulling up the guide channel as Steve comes around and sits down next to him.   
  
“What did you remember?” Steve asks.  
  
Bucky shakes his head, looks down at his hands and frowns, “that was… Steve that was the late 50s it was right when I first started … I wasn’t really stable and I was… very violent.”   
  
Steve nods and Bucky can’t bear to look at him. He feels like he disappoints him all the time and right now, in moments like these, he knows he’s just absolutely gutting his best friend.   
  
“Steve… _Stevie_ , I can’t stress this enough… I don’t want to remember these things.”   
  
“I know,” Steve says quietly.   
  
“I wish I never did them too - it’s not something I’m proud of. But it’s done. I can’t change that.”   
  
“Bucky I _know_ — just.” Steve runs his hands through his hair in that way he always does when he’s frustrated and Bucky turns, looking at him, nervous, afraid of where this is going but then Steve is angling in towards him and laying a hand on his thigh and squeezing. “I want to know. I want to know what you went through. I want to know about your life, even if I can’t change it, even if I can’t fix it… I don’t like not knowing - it … it scares me more wondering about what might have happened then knowing for certain. At least then I can be angry about it.”   
  
Bucky hangs his head and Steve reaches out with his other hand, turning Bucky’s face towards him, “I’m not angry at _you_. I’m angry at what they _did_ to you.”   
  
“Alright.”   
  
“No. Not alright,” Steve corrects. His thumb is stroking over Bucky’s jaw and Bucky blinks slowly - like a cat that’s earning your trust. “I’m mad as hell about what they did to you. I can’t change it anymore than you can change it but at least let me know what it was. Let me know who to be angry at - let me know where it hurts?”   
  
His voice is quiet and throaty and Bucky knows he’s getting choked up and he really doesn’t want that so he reaches up and covers the hand on his jaw with his own, squeezing. The smile he offers Steve is a little sad and he looks down and away, not sure he can meet Steve’s gaze while he says this.   
  
They were testing him out - testing his stamina, his training. It was like a gauntlet - to see how much he could remember, how fast he could complete tasks, what his limitations were - if any.   
  
It was one person after another that night, all to get to the highest gun on the ladder and it was long before they had him kitted out with all this brand new tech he has now. HYDRA had always been weapons-happy but they didn't give The Winter Soldier the best toys until he had proven himself worthy of using them.   
  
Faceless.   
  
All of them were faceless - he can't even distinguish one from the next in his mind, he just knows he has to go _through._   
  
His arm is new and faulty, it hurts like a bitch and half the time he's punching so hard because it's like gritting your teeth when you have a headache. Pain laying over other pain - distracting your central nervous system and making it pour out endorphins to mask what's happening. The plates grind together, they aren't quite fluid, still trying to adjust and he doesn't understand it's strength yet.   
  
He chokes someone to death like he's wringing out a shirt and drops them with a confused shout. But this is HYDRA and there's no time to be afraid or confused - there's only onward.   
  
Again and again and again and he's got a pistol he takes off a guy, but it jams so he's down to a knife and his arm. It's messy and he's been hit and is losing blood faster than his body can shake the wounds out. He heals like Steve but a little slower, they still haven't quite perfected it on him yet... they're still experimenting.   
  
By the time he gets to the end of the simulation - which ... isn't a simulation because HYDRA doesn't waste resources like that, it's trial by fucking fire and you live or you die - Bucky is dizzy and barely standing.   
  
There's no one coming for him this time. He has to meet his handler at a disclosed location - how he gets there is up to him.   
  
So he hotwires a car because that's faster than finding a set of keys and he drives to where they said they would be.   
  
No one is there, and he skids into a snowy ditch, the radio playing as he slumps into the steering wheel, snow falling through the broken window.   
  
_"Oh, life could be a dream (sh-boom); If I could take you up in paradise up above (sh-boom)-"_  
  
The handler did eventually find him, Bucky came-to as he was being dragged by the straps of his chest harness through the snow and slung into the back of a van.   
  
"I don't know what I thought, honestly. They had been experimenting with the mind wipes for about five years at that point..." Bucky shakes his head and looks down at his hands and then up at Steve, "I didn't want to die, but I thought if I died that I might get out." His laugh is bitter, "apparently that's not how HYDRA works."   
  
Steve stares at him, his brow furrowed. He looks angry, hurt, confused and Bucky knows, logically, that none of that is aimed towards him... but it still stings a little.   
  
"So maybe no more Pixar movies," Bucky says with a sad smile.   
  
Steve wraps his arms around him and pulls him into a hug, burying his face into Bucky's shoulder and breathing him in like he can memorise it. At first, Bucky doesn't know what to do but eventually he wraps his arms back around Steve and they don't say a word, they just hold each other on the couch for a long, long time.   
  
***  
  
Later, when Bucky is starting to drift off, Steve tucks a blanket in around him and Bucky moves to sit up.   
  
"I'll head back to my place - sorry - fuckin... Blue Planet always puts me to sleep I swear to God..."   
  
“I know it does,” Steve chuckles and puts a hand flat on Bucky's chest and pushes him back to laying down. "Stay here."   
  
"I'm not going to disappear," Bucky gripes, but the look Steve gives him makes Bucky freeze and he regrets that choice of words immediately. "Yeah... yeah fine. But leave the tv on?"   
  
"I'm gonna watch another episode anyways," Steve says, even though Bucky knows he's a liar.   
  
Steve stretches out and gets comfortable, fiddling around with the remote and Bucky twists so that he can see him and not the tv.   
  
"Hey," he calls, quietly.   
  
"Hm?" Steve looks at him, smiles and turns the volume down just a little.   
  
"I wouldn't leave you."   
  
Steve's breathing hitches over a little and he nods, eyes bright.   
  
They're quiet as Bucky shuffles his pillow into a spot he likes and then he sighs, "Stevie... I _promise._ " 


	10. I Love My Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warnings: talk of therapy & going to therapy, making fun of Starbucks (which is kind of a self call out post because I'm a gold-member and I'm trash help me), making fun of Steve Rogers

“I'm not a therapist,” Sam says, holding up his hands, “but I can recommend you one.”   
  
Bucky looks up from where he’s been pushing his fries around his plate and listening to Sam talk for the past hour about everything and nothing in particular. It’s been soothing, and a welcome reprieve from so much attention focused on him. Still, he feels like maybe he lost the last ten minutes of conversation if this is where it lead to.   
  
“Did I miss something?” Bucky asks.   
  
“I think you could probably deal with talking to someone - someone that isn’t any of us - who can help you, ya know, work through some of this.”   
  
And he’s right. He’s _really_ right. It’s been months since this trip down forced-memory-lane started and Bucky isn’t getting better and if anything he’s getting a little more paranoid about when something will set him off but also getting a little more reckless with letting it happen. He knows that’s bad.   
  
Bucky shrugs, “probably.”   
  
“Is that _‘probably’_ as in, I’m going to listen to Sam Wilson, my best friend, or _‘probably’_ as in I’m going to blow this off because I’m the Winter Soldier and I don’t need help.”   
  
Bucky cringes.   
  
“I will listen to Sam Wilson, my best friend,” he mutters, “I just … I wish I could just get away with talking to someone about this that I already know and that it’d make me feel better. Like I’ve been talking to Steve more! Hell I’ve even been talking to Tony a lot actually — and he’s been really helpful.. I mean I know half the time we basically get no work done because we end up having coffee and talking about how shitty life is and whatever but…” Bucky looks a little helpless and Sam gives him That Look.   
  
“They’re your friends and they want to listen, so do I,” Sam says, very seriously, “but none of us is professionally able to help you. Steve can listen all day but he doesn’t know how to help you work through some of this and come out the other side.”   
  
“Yeah… I get that, I guess.” Bucky pulls his milkshake over and swirls it around to mix it back up. “it’s not like I think going to a therapist is a bad idea I just, I don’t want to waste someone else’s time - what if I can’t be fixed, what if this is it for the rest of my life?”   
  
“That’s something they can tell you and make provisions for,” Sam says helpfully, “but I don’t think you’re broken, I think you just fell down and need some help getting up - and you’re not so far fallen that you can’t be helped.”   
  
Bucky offers him a sad smile and Sam pushes some of his fries towards him, “here, eat the rest of these Mr. Super Metabolism … I don’t want to have to run them off with Captain America later… he makes me feel bad enough about myself as it is.”   
  
“Will you go with me?” Bucky asks.   
  
“Hm?”  
  
“To therapy. I don’t think I trust myself to walk in that door if I’m by myself.”   
  
Sam grins, “my man, I will walk you there, wait for you, and take you out for those shitty ass Starbucks things you like so much afterwards, how about that?”   
  
“Sounds like a deal, I guess,” Bucky’s smile this time is warm and he takes the rest of Sam’s fries, adding a little extra salt to them, just to make Sam gag.   
  
“The fact that you experience this with no consequences is what hurts me the most,” Sam says, shaking his head. “You will never hear the words ‘high cholesterol’ in your life.”   
  
“I’m doing this for both of us,” Bucky says, cramming a handful of them in his mouth, “this is for _US,_ Sam,” he says, mouth full, “because we’re _FRIENDS_.”   
  
“UGH, you are gross and also the worst.”   
  
***  
  
The thing is though, Sam is true to his word.   
  
Not just about finding Bucky someone to talk to, but about actually going with him. Bucky tells Steve he’s taking an afternoon off with Sam because he isn’t sure how to tell Steve that he’s going to see a therapist yet. It’s not that he’s ashamed of it but he wants to see how this goes first, make sure it sticks.   
  
Sam meets him in the lobby of the tower with a to-go breakfast bagel sandwich and shitty coffee that he knows Bucky will hate.   
  
Bucky gives him a grimace and holds up his to-go mug.   
  
“Steve made mine,” he says, taking the sandwich.   
  
“My coffee not good enough for you?” Sam says, feigning offense.   
  
“That is correct.”   
  
Bucky walks past him and heads towards the door as Sam follows him, laughing and shaking his head.   
  
They make their way to the office that Sam’s picked out, Sam keeping up a steady stream of conversation along the way as Bucky eats his bagel sandwich. It’s comfortable and fun and Bucky interjects at necessary points and it doesn’t feel like he’s going to talk to someone about all the fucked up things in his head.   
  
“Here we are,” Sam says, drawing to a stop.   
  
The building is nondescript and if Bucky were casing the place he’d probably point out that it’s got too many windows, and he can’t keep an eye on all the exits and it just looks like someone’s house. How does he take this kind of thing seriously when it’s like sitting in his grandmas living room? Will there be tea?   
  
“Fuck,” Bucky says, staring at the door.   
  
Sam puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes, “I’m gonna wait right out here okay. It’s 40 minutes - that’s all and if you had to stop sooner I bet he would let you.”   
  
Bucky nods and looks at Sam, “you sure this guy is okay?”   
  
“I wouldn’t send you to anyone that I didn’t personally know and approve of.”   
  
“Alright.”   
  
So Bucky opens the door.   
  
After all, he’s been able to walk into the lairs of mob bosses, hit men, and terrorists… how bad can a therapist be?   
  
***  
  
Sam is standing there when Bucky walks back out the door and he has two frappuccinos in hand and a bakery bag over his wrist.   
  
“I got the ultra caramel and the ultra mocha and I figured I would take whichever one you didn’t want.”   
  
Bucky reaches for the mocha and Sam taps their cups together, “cheers. C’mon lets go sit in the park, I have a shit ton of baked goods for you. I remember Cap said you were into that kind of garbage.”   
  
“How dare you blaspheme baked goods,” Bucky says, sipping his drink.   
  
“I’m sorry I don’t have the metabolism of a cheetah - this is trash food and you’re the only person who can eat it and not feel it,” Sam says, smacking Bucky in the abs with the bag.   
  
“I feel it,” Bucky says, “I just don’t have any negative side effects from it, if that’s what you were getting at.”   
  
“That’s just rude,” Sam says, nudging Bucky in the direction of the park.   
  
They find a bench near the pond and Bucky starts picking apart a croissant, feeding it to some ducks that have wandered up expecting food.   
  
“How did it go?” Sam asks.   
  
“Better and worse than I expected,” Bucky says.   
  
“How so?”   
  
“Better because I really thought they were going to look at me and tell me that I was an idiot for showing up and thinking I could get better. Worse because I haven’t ever talked about some of that shit to anyone and now I feel all raw about it.” He tears off a chunk of the bread and then shreds it extra small as the ducklings that were hiding in the reeds come hurrying up.   
  
Sam watches him and sips his drink thoughtfully, “sounds about right. You going back?”   
  
“Yeah, same time next week.”   
  
“It’ll get easier - talking about shit,” Sam says, “the hardest part is just getting in the door the first time.”   
  
Bucky nods and watches as at least five ducklings squabble at his feet over a handful of croissant.   
  
“What isn’t getting easier is this goddamn drink.”   
  
Bucky smirks, “you don’t like frappuccinos?”   
  
Sam makes a gagging sound, “I mean I like them because I like sweet stuff, but how do you drink these all the time? I am honestly on the brink of diabetic shock.”   
  
“Lightweight,” Bucky says, shrugging and sipping his own.   
  
“Yeah well you can say that all you want, you don’t have to run the calories from this off at five in the morning.”   
  
“You don’t either, that’s a personal choice,” Bucky tips his drink at Sam and Sam wrinkles his nose.   
  
“Ugh, it’s a personal choice not to be too out of shape to save _your_ dumb ass - that’s what’s up.”   
  
Bucky laughs at that, “you could run at a more reasonable hour.”   
  
“Okay! Tell that to Steven Grant Up At 4 AM Every Day Rogers!” Sam says, reaching in the bag and trying to find something that isn’t covered in sugar and coming back with banana bread.   
  
“He’s not up EVERY day at 4am,” Bucky says with only a tiny bit of defensiveness, “just… _most_ …days.”   
  
“You’re welcome to keep him in bed,” Sam says, “especially if it means we could postpone our run until at least 7 when normal people are alive.”   
  
Bucky snorts and uses his straw to stir up some of the whipped cream in the bottom of his frappuccino and hopes he doesn’t look as red as he feels.   
  
“We don’t — not like —“ he clears his throat and the ducklings that had recently fallen asleep around his feet, startle awake looking disgruntled. Bucky sighs and looks at Sam, “we don’t _sleep_ together?”   
  
“Not yet,” Sam says cryptically and Bucky leans back on the bench, staring at the pond just to breathe through **that.**


	11. Nine in the Afternoon

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warning: Find the Mean Girls references.

Bucky has another episode in Tony’s lab because of, hilariously, Panic! at The Disco.   
  
When he wakes up, Tony is there with a bottle of water, sitting still and smiling a little nervously, “I did indeed, panic.”   
  
Bucky snorts and shakes his head, pressing the cold bottle against his face and waiting for the moment to pass. He forgot that little run in…   
  
There had been a longish mission he was sent on in a major city and he was .. well.. about as undercover as he ever got. In that, they sent him in looking like a civilian while still leaving him armed to the teeth. He could blend in with everyone around him, but he was still exceptionally deadly.   
  
On the way to his first rendezvous, where he would inevitably pick up a small arsenal, he had stolen an iPod off of some kid to help stave off the boredom. That wasn’t something he could ask his handlers for and certainly not something that Pierce would have okayed. Besides, was the kid really going to miss it? This was one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the area and he was dressed head to toe in designer threads - he could afford it so Bucky felt absolutely no remorse about lifting it off him.   
  
The afterwards … the messy bits… he tells himself not to relive, to not dwell on with Tony. He acknowledges that they happen and he makes a note to talk to his therapist about it but … with Tony he lets that part go. This is his friend.   
  
“I guess that was one of the later ones right before I ran into you all...” Bucky says with a nostalgic sigh. “God it feels like this was all a different life but it turns out it was ten years ago.”   
  
Tony rifles around through one of the drawers next to his work station as Bucky swings his legs off the table watching the Wakandan Tech Tablet update wheel cycle through. His arm is mid-update and he’s sort of delighted watching Tony try and stumble through using the Wakandan interface. Bucky’s phone is Wakandan so he’s used to it and for the first time ever he’d gotten to have a change to be the one showing Tony the technological ropes.   
  
Bucky coughs, “I punched him in the face, with my right hand, obviously. And I really pulled it because I wasn’t trying to kill him - but anyways I took his stupid little iPod just to have something and Jesus I regretted that.” Bucky swipes his right hand over his face as he laughs.   
  
“The violence?” Tony asks, not looking up.  
  
“No, the iPod - I should’ve tried to find someone less... Emo.”   
  
Tony pauses and looks back at him with a crooked grin, “Emo?!”   
  
“Peter,” Bucky says, still laughing, “I mean I listened to it - it was one of those instances of fuck this I came all this way I’m not going to give up now even if it sucks.”   
  
“You _hate listened_ to an entire iPod of Emo music?!” Tony says, incredulous, as he actually swivels and stares at Bucky.   
  
Bucky is shaking with it now, head leaned back as he wheezes a little, “it was bad, it was _so bad_ \- absolutely so regrettable.”   
  
“Why didn’t you wipe it— never mind stupid question oh my _god_ I cannot believe,” Tony slides his hair over and checks the update progress before nudging Bucky’s knee. “Close your eyes I have a gift.”  
  
“You know, coming from you I half expect it to be your dick,” Bucky says and obediently following instructions.   
  
“The surprise here is that it’s _not,_ ” Tony says just as something small drops into Bucky’s hand. He opens his eyes and a startled laugh makes its way out of his chest.   
  
“Fuck!”   
  
“I had one awhile back it’s probably in better condition than the one you lifted in the Soviet Block.”  
  
Tony is absolutely beaming at him and Bucky feels kind of elated about this. Steve, bless him, gets a little too upset about possibly triggering one of these things but Tony? Tony gets it. Tony lets Bucky feel like he’s in control of it by letting him experiment with things… but under safe conditions, obviously. “You’re not like a regular mom - you’re like a cool mom,” Bucky says, smirking.  
  
Tony barks out a laugh and pats Bucky’s hand, “if you’re going to have flashbacks I’d rather you do it in the home.”   
  
The tablet pings that it’s completed the update and Tony double checks the read out with a grin. “Looks perfect, not like I expect anything else from Shuri to be honest, just .... _you._ ”   
  
“Very rude,” Bucky says, carefully removing the diagnostic lines and handing them out to Tony.   
  
“How’s the patient?” Steve asks, door swishing open.   
  
“He’s a fugly slut,” Tony chirps.   
  
Bucky’s raucous laughter fills the lab as Steve looks on, absolutely mystified by this turn of events.   
  
***  
  
Bucky fiddles with the iPod later, he has it hooked up to his laptop and he’s using iTunes to load it with music. Some of it is stuff he remembers from the first one just for the nostalgia, and some of it is stuff he listens to now. He’s so immersed in it that he doesn’t notice Steve settling down next to him on the couch until there’s a mug of hot chocolate being pressed against the back of his hand.   
  
“Hey, think you can take a break?”   
  
“Yeah it’s gotta sit here and upload now anyways… sync up or something,” Bucky shrugs and sets the whole thing aside, pulling his legs up under himself and taking the hot chocolate from Steve. He’s made it with milk which means it’s incredibly decadent and Bucky can’t help but sip it exceptionally slow, savoring it. He remembers what a luxury this was back when they were kids and the war crimes he would’ve committed back in the European theatre to get his hands on a cup.   
  
Even though this is ‘instant’ it’s still like liquid gold to him and he sighs against the warm mug, cradling it in his hands. Steve lays a blanket over his lap and Bucky curls up tighter, letting the feeling wash over him.   
  
“I let Sam talk me into going to therapy,” Bucky says, closing his eyes. “I’ve been to three appointments already… it’s been going really well. I think.”   
  
The quiet in the room is a little unnerving and Bucky finally has to open his eyes because he’s a little bit worried he might have upset Steve, but when he looks over at him, Steve is giving him a soft look.   
  
“I’m really glad you decided to talk to someone, I think that’s amazing.. will you let me know if they tell you anything that I can help with?”   
  
Bucky nods and sips his hot chocolate because he doesn’t trust himself to talk and that’s not happened to him for a long time. He wants to bury himself in Steve’s words, in his soft glances, in the way that he seems to wrap Bucky in his warmth and let it all spread outward.   
  
“I’ll let you know. Maybe one day you can go with me - just to … just to like walk there or whatever.”   
  
“I’d love that.”   
  
Bucky smiles and then laughs quietly. “I had .. Sam went a couple of times and then… then one day MJ went with me and we ate like an entire dozen of cake pops.”   
  
Steve makes a sound and Bucky looks at him helplessly, “we thought it would be a good idea to try every flavor and then like, you know, get a few of the ones that we knew we already liked? I don’t know it made sense at the time… anyways - we ate a lot of cake pops between us and I fucking… I felt so sick afterwards.”   
  
“Oh my God was this the day that you were laying face down on the couch and I thought you had been poisoned?” Steve asks, trying not to laugh, but he’s failing miserably.   
  
“It was - and you know what, I had been poisoned. Poisoned by cake pops. I swear.. I don’t know if I can ever eat one again… it had seemed like such a good idea and then all the sudden I’m like, 8 in and its like, maybe this was a mistake.”  
  
“It took you 8 cake pops to realize you’d made a mistake?” Steve raises an eyebrow and Bucky sets his mug aside, crossing his arms over his chest and giving Steve a challenging look.   
  
“I don’t know how you think you have the moral high ground to lecture me about moderation when your motto for life is literally ‘I can do this all day’.”   
Steve at least has the decency to turn red and Bucky narrows his eyes, “that’s exactly what I thought Steven Grant Rogers - don’t try me.”   
  



	12. Feel So Close

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: recreational drug/alcohol usage; blink and you miss it IronStrange

A dance club seems like the worst place to go but the DJ isn't supposed to be playing anything other than the latest dance shit and Bucky is pent up. He's got cabin fever from staying in the tower or in his usual haunts, working on straight avoidance to get around this whole thing which isn't healthy as a coping mechanism but it's all he's got so far. He just... _fuck_ he just needs something and everyone volunteers to go. All for one, one for all type of thing. Hell, even Thor says he's going to go with them which is going to be fucking ridiculous but honestly, Bucky is fine with that - everyone needs to live a little.   
  
Tony, of course, can only get them access to the best places so they end up at a club that just opened up and has a VIP area that might as well be a spa. It's all leather bench seating, low tables, chilled champagne bottle service, and people kissing their ass. Tony asserts himself in the position of power, dead in the center of everything, Stephen on one side and Bucky on the other. He's having the time of his life by the looks of it - and especially with the way Stephen keeps him on his toes arguing about magic versus science. Stephen is going to lose this argument but Bucky likes watching him try anyways if only because it gets Tony worked up and sassy as fuck.   
  
Steve is pressed up against his other side and looking concerned because God forbid Captain America ever ratchet it down a notch and enjoy his life.   
  
Bucky reaches in his pocket and pulls out his trusty advil and shakes them at Steve.   
  
"Wanna get drunk?"   
  
Steve looks at the bottle, then up at Bucky and starts to frown. It's his default expression - the one that says Not Only Have You Let Me Down, You've Disappointed America And Lady Liberty. Bucky sighs and rolls his eyes, going to put them away because he's not sure he wants to do this alone, but Steve grabs his wrist to stop him.   
  
"You don't do this all the time, right?"   
  
Bucky huffs out a laugh, "fuck no - maybe once or twice a month for special occasions... if that?"   
  
Steve's frown seems to ease up and he nods at Bucky, holds his hand out, palm up and waits.   
  
Bucky smiles.   
  
He taps four out into Steve's hand and takes four for himself, picking up a glass of champagne and clinking it to Steve's. "Bottoms up."   
  
It takes 23 minutes for the room to swim like it did when Bucky drank too much whiskey before the war and got into it with that kid Tommy who always liked giving Steve a hard time. He feels loose and good, sliding down in the booth and rolling his shoulders back giving Tony a sideways glance and winking when Tony smirks at him.   
  
“Still as effective?" Tony asks.   
  
"Yeah. Fuck yeah," Bucky breathes, stretching out. He throws his left arm around Steve's shoulders and drags him in, bumping their cheeks together. "Feelin' it?"   
  
Steve blinks at him like a deer in headlights but his face is pink and rosy and Bucky's lip curls at the corner, "mmmyou are."   
  
Steve clears his throat and lays his head back, half on Bucky's shoulder as he stretches his legs out in front of him and shoves his hands into his hoodie pockets. He's trying to keep those to himself which is cute. Fuckin' _adorable._   
  
"You guys want to dance?" Natasha shouts from the stairs that lead down to the main dance floor.   
  
It's chaos down below - lights and fog and bodies moving together as one and it's somewhere they can just get lost in. Bucky's aching for it, to be honest. He hasn't let himself go for awhile - hasn't let himself just feel free wrung out except when he's in the gym but it's not the same. He's missed this - going out - _dancing._ It's completely different than the 40's but he likes this too because it has all its own charm.   
  
"Fuck. Yeah. ALRIGHT." Bucky shoves himself off the couch and reaches back, grabbing Steve without thinking, pulling him along because he's not going alone and he needs moral support and Steve - bless him - doesn't even hesitate.   
  
The nice part about a crowded dance floor is that you can get lost in it, not just the people, but the music - and letting himself go. He’s safe here. Clint and Natasha are somewhere to his right. Tony and Stephen are up in the VIP either still arguing or possibly making out - whatever that means. Thor is … you know honestly Bucky is not sure where Thor is but he’s here and if something happens, he is pretty goddamn sure the God of Thunder can get him out of here without issue.   
  
Literally. _A God_.   
  
Steve looks awkward but he’s trying and Bucky laughs because Steve never got the hang of dancing back in the 40s, it’s not like that would have changed all that much between now and then. Bucky tries to teach him how to find the music’s beat and rhythm, but all Steve does is sway unnaturally and look constipated.   
  
Bucky laughs much harder and Steve can’t help but laugh too. Bucky moves with more grace, more ease, mimicking the movements of people in the room because he’s always been pretty good at picking up on things like that and he can feel Steve watching him. Which in itself is sort of nice and new and not new. Bucky smiles, looks away and tries not to let it go to his head because he could get into performing - could let this be something a lot more dangerous and heated. But he’s trying to behave…   
  
He flicks his eyes up and Steve is biting his lip. Bucky grins and reaches for him just as the tempo changes and the dj says 'throwback' and Steve just... Steve panics. It's written on his face that he's not sure how this is going to go and how it could end but his face drops and he's digging in his pockets suddenly as Bucky looks on in confusion.   
  
This was going so well...   
  
"What?"   
  
He doesn't get an answer, instead he gets earbuds shoved in his ears and Steve's got his phone out and is hitting play and Bucky just stares at him.   
  
_'just in case'_ Steve mouths at him, shrugging helplessly. He must have had Tony put stuff in there that Bucky said he liked that wouldn't set him off but he knows it's not the one playing. The bass from the DJ is thrumming in his body and it doesn't match the music in his ears but it's enough. Steve's hands cup over Bucky's ears, adjusting the earbuds and Bucky just ... Steve's carrying around emergency headphones in case Bucky might need them and it's doing this thing to his heart. He thought he couldn't have a heart attack but it sure feels like that's what's about to happen.   
  
The two of them stand, awkwardly locked together, swaying slightly to two different beats and Bucky can't stop looking at Steve. They laugh, situation awkward, absolutely nominal. But not awkward enough to stop, obviously. And Bucky doesn't know what song Steve is listening to and to be honest he's not entirely sure what he's listening to either. Whatever it is it belongs to Stark and must be on a pre-approved list of shit that Bucky would have never heard before.  
  
Bucky reaches up, hips moving to his own song and pulls on Steve's hands, dragging him forward, getting Steve to wrap an arm around Bucky's head so it feels a little less like a grade school formal... and it brings their bodies flush.   
  
"What are we doing?" Bucky shouts.   
  
Steve just shrugs and laughs, ducking until their foreheads brush. "Fuck ...I don't know." Bucky reads his lips and it makes him smile. Shit what Stevie does to him.  
  
They both giggle a little - unable to contain the way it bubbles up and Bucky drags his metal hand down Steve's chest and lays it on his hip to get him to sync up. Whatever Steve's hearing must be at a faster tempo but he slows down, matches Bucky's speed and Bucky can only hear the sound of the music that Steve's pressing into his ears. There's a whole world  happening out there, on the dance floor, in the club, in the Village, in the city - but Bucky's life has narrowed down to the way that Steve's eyelashes fan over his cheeks, how he's blushing and close. How when Bucky's thumb pushes up under the hem of his shirt, his skin is fever hot against the metal of his new hand and he loves that Steve runs so warm.   
  
Like summer itself - this golden boy - he's glorious, radiant, and he's completely focused on Bucky and Bucky remembers trying to teach him how to quick step in their living room so they could take some girls out on the town. How Steve had felt feather-light in his arms, fit-to-break, and Bucky was terrified that whoever handled him might be too rough. He didn't care when Steve stepped on his toes, all he cared about was that someone was gonna shove him too hard and he'd go tipping back and shatter like porcelain against the dance hall floor.   
  
Bucky squeezes, hand slipping up to wrap tighter around Steve's waist, spanning along his lower back, letting the sweat slick his way.   
  
Steve buries his face in Bucky's shoulder and tightens a hand in the back of his shirt.   
  
"I hate this song," Bucky shouts. He feels Steve shudder with laughter but he doesn't move. Neither of them do.   
  
When the song ends, Steve reaches up, pulls the earbuds out and pockets them. He starts to stand back but Bucky pulls him back in.   
  
"C'mon, Rogers - show me what you remember."   
  
"I don't think this is that kind of dance music!"   
  
Bucky throws his head back and laughs, picking up Steve's hands in his and squeezing, drawing him in close and talking directly into his ear so he knows he'll be heard.   
  
"Show me something new."   
  
**  
  
They sleep together that night, in a bed. Bucky’s bed, actually. He’s tired and he doesn’t want to leave Steve, but he’s sick of the couch so he just pulls him back to the bedroom and yanks him down into the unmade sheets.   
  
Steve spoons behind him, wrapping an arm around his waist and pressing their bodies together.   
  
“It’s too quiet,” Bucky says.   
  
Steve breathes out against the back of his neck and Bucky can feel the tip of his nose drag into his hair.   
  
“How about I tell you a story,” Steve says, voice low and gravelly.   
  
His lips brush over Bucky’s neck and Bucky's eyes flutter closed because he can’t keep them open when he can feel Steve this close, when he’s everywhere at once.   
  
“It’s a fairy tale. There’s a curse about a prince sleeping forever.”   
  
“Does a kiss wake him up?”   
  
“He’s pretty self sufficient actually. But the kiss doesn’t hurt matters.”   
  
Bucky snorts and feels Steve smile into his hair as a hand spreads over his chest. He feels heavy and close to sleep as the words pull out of him, slow like cold honey, “does it have a happy ending?”   
  
There’s a pause as the two of them breathe together and Steve squeezes him close, “yeah, I think it does.” 


	13. Que Sera Sera

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional Warnings; talk of torture, mostly all mental or emotional. Talk of therapy, of therapy practice. Panic attack mention.

There was… maybe… some part of Bucky that hoped taking off his old arm and getting rid of it completely would make the flashbacks stop. He had entertained this idea that maybe the arm was causing him to have these unscheduled visits with the past -  afteralll who knows what kind of programming Hydra was capable of, it would make absolutely perfect sense to him for them to hard wire his goddamn prosthesis to fuck with his memory. They _were_ evil enough…   
  
But the arm came off and the other? Well…   
  
Bucky wakes up with Steve curled around him on the floor, he's propped up on one elbow so he can look down at Bucky and his other arm is slung protectively over Bucky’s chest, fingers idly stroking along Bucky’s ribs.   
  
“Twenty minutes,” Steve says, eyes flicking to the clock across the room and then back down to Bucky’s face.

  
He lowers himself so that he’s hovering less and Bucky is staring into space, blinking and breathing heavily.   
  
“You were supposed to kill him,” Pierce says, off to his right.   
  
Bucky swallows and grinds his teeth together.   
  
“He’s a liability,” Pierce sing-songs, “look at you, Soldier…” Bucky’s heart rate is spiking and he definitely feels like he might be having a panic attack? He’s not sure. But he stares straight ahead and tries not to make eye contact with the specter of his former handler.   
  
“When are you going to tell him?” Pierce says, swimming into blurry focus over Bucky. “How long is it going to take?”   
  
Bucky screws his eyes shut and rolls over into Steve’s chest.   
  
“Pierce used to spend a lot of time torturing me, _personally_ , after he took over the program,” Bucky says, pressing his head under Steve’s. He doesn’t want to look at him. Not yet. Not for this.   
  
“Bucky I want to know but only if you’re comfortable telling me,” Steve reminds him, stroking over his back.   
  
“I want to tell you, I need to get it out, I need you to hear it too,” Bucky says. “He used to … I started to remember you,” Bucky whispers.   
  
Steve takes a shuddering breath and his fingertips dig into Bucky’s shoulders.   
  
The first time he remembered Steve was in the 50s?  He can’t quite put his finger on that one… only because after that, their … procedures… became more intense, more violent. Whenever he would remember Steve, or show vestiges of his old self, they would wipe him, more thoroughly than before.   
  
_Conditioning_ , they called it.   
  
He fought it, every time, and tried to combat it as much as he could but there was only so much his brain was capable of taking when the onslaught was endless. He can remember remembering Steve _now._ But between missions it was tenuous. Occasionally he’d be in the middle of something and the pain of missing him would be overwhelming and all he could do was fake through it until it was over and then try and fool them into letting him just go back to cryo without the wipe. Let him hold onto something, anything, _please_.   
  
He was never that lucky.   
  
But they were never vicious. Not like Pierce.   
  
Pierce found his weakness and exploited it in reverse.   
  
“If you do this for me, you’ll see him again.”   
  
And so Bucky obeyed.   
  
He walked in after a particularly daunting and bloody mission that brought him to his breaking point. He always tried to work in a morally grey area - what he was doing wasn’t _right_ but was it ethically wrong either? He was never exactly a bad guy … just not a good guy either. He was necessary, if still evil.   
  
Pierce was sitting in the chair in the lab… _that_ chair… legs crossed as he read the paper looking as casual as you please about the whole thing as Bucky shambled in and stood in front of him, blood splattered and exhausted.   
  
“Is he here,” Bucky asked.   
  
Pierce had something playing on the radio and tilted his head, feigning confusion.   
  
“Is who here?” he asked.   
  
“Stevie,” Bucky said, “you told me if I did it I’d see him again.”   
  
Pierce smiled, over the rims of his glasses and folded the paper with a chuckle, “ah… our little wager, I almost forgot.” He pushed himself out of the chair and walked towards Bucky, sidling to the right and leaning in to whisper to him, “maybe he’ll be in your dreams.”   
  
Before Bucky could react, hands were around his arms and he was being forced down into the char and prepped for a wipe.   
  
That scene would play out in a few different iterations over the years… of Pierce offering him the impossible and then never delivering… and Bucky… too damaged to remember that he’d be betrayed would fall for it each and every time.   
  
“I knew him,” he smiled sadly and someone shoved a mouth guard between his teeth as Pierce hummed next to him.   
  
“You won’t in just a moment. _Que Sera Sera_ ~”   
  
Steve is quiet but Bucky can feel the tension in his body and he buries himself in his heat and presence - in the way he’s just so fucking solid and there. No one can take him away, no can trick Bucky into going to sleep and telling him that he was never real.   
  
“Tell me you’re here,” Bucky whispers, just to make sure.   
  
Steve’s arms tighten around him and he gathers Bucky into his chest protectively, covering him like he’s a live round but in reverse. He’s keeping everything else away.   
  
“I’m here,” Steve says, kissing into Bucky’s hair, “Bucky I’m here.”   
  
**  
  
Bucky tells his therapist about it later - he’d told him about the torture already but he tells him about telling Steve and the guy asks him how it made him feel. Bucky had said “light” because for him, it had been letting go of something and finally having the release - that Pierce wasn’t there to hurt him anymore and that Steve was actually real and there and couldn’t be taken from him. He wasn’t a bargaining chip in some fucked up game that people were playing with Bucky’s head.   
  
His therapist is really proud of him for being able to articulate that and he asks if Bucky thinks there’s something else about the new arm that maybe bothers him too.   
  
“Like that it’s not fit right to me?”   
  
His therapist smiles, “no, like you threw out part of yourself without really taking the time to let that go.”   
  
Bucky looks down at his new arm, the beautiful blue and gold plates that ripple and shift seamlessly with the way he twists and he thinks back to the silver arm … they’re both just machines at the end of the day, they aren’t really him… but it had been him, hadn’t it? He threw that arm off and thought his life would change if it was gone and that things would get better…   
  
New arm, new me!   
  
But that’s not how things have worked out at all and now he has this beautiful new arm that works flawlessly and it doesn’t hurt him and it’s not just supposed to be a weapon and yet… he’s still terrified of what happens when he loses 20 minutes of time to flashbacks. Who even is he with this arm? At least he knew who he was as The Winter Soldier, even if he hated that guy - he knew what he was, what he was about.   
  
This is new, uncharted territory.   
  
Does he miss it? Shit. Does he?

“I think I’m scared of losing more of myself,” Bucky says suddenly. “After everything else that’s been taken away... it was so easy to take the arm away too and .... I know no one here would hurt me, logically I know that, but...” he struggles momentarily as his therapist smiles benignly. 

 

“I already lost so much.”

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’re looking for a version of this chapter’s song, I would recommend the Pink Martini cover.


	14. White Winter Hymnal

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional warnings: n/a

The Avengers, in an official capacity, have to attend a Christmas charity function at the end of November. That’s all well and good and Bucky agrees to go because he’s sort of like, Avengers Adjacent. Besides, it means he gets to put on a fancy suit and it’s worth it for the way that Steve looks at him in the elevator on the way downstairs.  
  
And the thing is, the actual charity gala isn’t a big deal - it’s mostly sitting at a table, having their picture taken in the paper, letting Tony donate a large sum of money, and then politely leaving afterwards so that they don’t cause a commotion or a scene. It’s all for show. The real Christmas party is actually back at the tower where everyone is invited, friends and family, and there’s a giant Christmas tree on the community living floor, and someone is playing Christmas music, and there’s dessert on every available surface. Bucky wants to take the feeling in the room and bottle it so that when he feels like shit some time later, he’ll have this to look back on. They’ve been lucky - having a break from reality, having a break from everything… and it won’t last but while it does, it feels so good.  
  
Pepper and Happy bring in an entire cart of ornaments and Ned, MJ, and Peter swarm the tree with Tony to start strategizing placement. Bucky finally runs out of eggnog and he drags himself out of the arm chair he’s been commandeering for the past hour to go remedy the situation.  
  
Steve pops out of the kitchen and leans against the doorframe, grinning, and Bucky tracks that direction with his hands full of cookies. Someone brought those iced Christmas cookies that are just sugar on sugar on sugar and he really fucking loves them and he’s not going to feel bad about eating a whole dozen of them with his eggnog because he didn’t get to enjoy Christmas for the majority of his life and he’s going to enjoy it now.  
  
Self care. His therapist told him all about that and he’s going to claim _self care_.  
  
So Bucky slips by Steve, waggling his eyebrows because honestly, he’s having a great time and everyone is in a good mood. Even Stephen Strange who usually gets a little weird in a large crowd is letting it all hang out (for him) and Bucky definitely saw him use his Jedi Mind Tricks to get the Star on the top of that fuck-enormous tree.  
  
“Hey,” Steve slips a hand around Bucky’s waist and Bucky gives him a curious look as Steve stops him in his tracks.  
  
Steve looks up and Bucky follows his line of sight.  
  
Oh.  
  
_Oh._

He’s pretty sure Steve had to orchestrate this, has probably been waiting in the kitchen for who knows how long just to get a shot at catching Bucky under the mistletoe and goddamnit. Bucky is...shit it’s _so cute_.  
  
Without hesitation or second guesses, Bucky slides his metal hand up and tilts Steve’s head where he wants it before he meets him halfway and stops. Because this is a little different. This isn’t what they’ve been doing or anything they’ve done before but it’s maybe what he’s been wanting to get around to.  
  
And now is as a good a moment as any, he guesses.  
  
“Yeah?” Bucky breathes out.  
  
Steve just exhales and kisses him.  
  
It’s slow and chaste and feels as easy as everything else does. It’s like laying on the couch together, like sitting around listening to music, like smoking in a back alley - completely perfectly simple and almost expected. Bucky dips a little, pressing his body more into Steve’s and makes an alarmingly high pitched noise that might qualify as a whimper.  
  
Steve pulls back and drags his thumb over Bucky’s lower lip, watching it before he flicks his eyes up to Bucky’s.  
  
“I guess that’s a yes from me.”  
  
Bucky blinks at Steve without a word and then pulls him back down into another kiss. Admittedly this one is just as slow but Bucky slips his tongue into the mix and Steve’s hands clench at the added stimulation. Which is interesting and something that Bucky is bound and determined to experiment with at a later date.  
  
Steve’s mouth is wet and hot and Bucky wishes he had known this all along because he really would have… well he’s not sure. He wants to say he would’ve done something earlier but maybe he wouldn’t have? Maybe this is the perfect timing? He’s got a handful of cookies, a handful of Steve Rogers and he is fully prepared to drop the cookies just so he can have two handfuls of Steve Rogers.  
  
“You were on your way into the kitchen,” Steve says, drawing back but his mouth is close enough that their lips keep brushing.  
  
“Yeah,” Bucky mumbles, refusing to open his eyes and let the spell break.  
  
Steve just laughs and walks them backwards, out of the doorway and into the kitchen, sliding his hands down until Bucky is kind of startled because he’s never had Steve be assertive in his life — okay wait that’s bullshit, Steve is absolutely assertive, just … it usually involves him throwing himself on a bomb or something not .. not like this. But he’s grabbing Bucky by the back of his thighs and putting him on the counter and not even breaking stride.  
  
Well. Alright. _Fuck_ that’s hot.  
  
“Did you want more eggnog?” Steve asks. His voice is low and he looks like he’s teasing and Bucky just stares at him, kind of stunned because he wants to know if Steve planned this himself or if someone helped him out or how long he’s been thinking about doing this…  
  
“You’re an ass,” Bucky says, ditching his cookies on the counter and wrapping both hands around Steve’s neck so he can bring him in for a kiss that’s filthy and absolutely needy. He can feel Steve laughing into his mouth, but he’s really focusing on Steve’s hands and how they start at Bucky’s knees and then shove as they glide up to his thighs. He’s pushing Bucky’s legs apart and situating himself in between them and Bucky just melts. Gets handfuls of blonde hair and warm skin and lets himself go into it.  
  
Steve kisses like he’s got all the time in the world and Bucky keeps trying to hurry him along but he’s having none of it.  Which Bucky probably needs but which he finds really amusing. Here’s Steve Rogers who can’t be talked out of any bad idea he’s ever had and he’s trying to slow Bucky down and make him savor something.  
  
“Upstairs,” Steve says, mouthing along Bucky’s jaw and down to his throat. Bucky threads his fingers into Steve’s hair and makes a huffing sound, finally opening his eyes and looking over his shoulder where the party still moves outside the door without them.  
  
Steve’s teeth scrape at his neck and down into his half open collar, his hands spreading open over Bucky’s hips as fingertips inch against the hem of his shirt.  
  
Bucky wraps a leg around Steve’s hips and pulls him close groaning, “what do you want to do upstairs?”  
  
“Honestly?” Steve leans back like he’s drunk, his hair mussed and his lips full and red, “just more of this.”  
  
Bucky smiles, a little incredulous and overly satisfied but all that gets sucker punched out of him when Steve’s eyes lower and he bites his lip whispering, “please.”  
  
“NNNNnngh,” Bucky shoves off the counter and crashes into Steve, dragging him by his open bowtie towards the lifts and gasping as one opens and they walk right in, Steve crowding him into the back wall and licking his mouth open.  
  
“You—“ Steve groans and then actually growls, yanking out of Bucky’s grasp enough to press their foreheads together and just breathe, “just this — for tonight — I just want this.”  
  
His hand is soft as it cups Bucky’s check and Bucky can’t help but turn and press a kiss into the palm, nuzzling as the elevator dings at their floor.  
  
Steve walks them backwards, leading Bucky like he’s on a leash, tugging him along towards his apartment and Bucky is helpless- has to follow.  
  
“I want you … but I want to take my time,” Steve says, keeping his eyes on Bucky until his back hits his door and he can pull Bucky against his chest. “I want to learn every inch of you,” Steve breathes, “and map it out with my mouth.”  
  
Bucky closes his eyes and thinks of confession and holy relics and that horrifying crucifix that was at the front of the church that used to give him the heebie jeebies  and anything but the way Steve is panting into his skin and taking him apart with nothing but words. He wants to die like this because it can’t possibly get better but he knows it will? Fuck there’s more - they’re just kissing. Literally this is rated PG and he hasn’t even gotten his shirt off and he’s ready to come just listening to the way Steve paints a picture with his words.  
  
“That okay?” Steve asks. And suddenly Bucky remembers he has to participate- he has to respond and be present and not just melt into this in the middle of the goddamn hallway.  
  
“Yeah - yeah, anything with you.” And he means it. More than he’s probably ever meant anything in his life he means this.  
  
They pull away for long enough to get in the apartment, to strip out of their dress clothes and Bucky pulls on one of Steve’s old tee shirts with his briefs and tries not to come over shy when Steve is sitting on the edge of the bed, watching him and then pulling him down under the covers.  
  
But he stays true to his word, cups Bucky’s jaw and uses his thumb to coax his mouth open for another kiss. This one is cooled off, a little less frantic, more thought out, and Bucky squirms forward, tangling their legs together and smiling when Steve is half on top of him the next minute. He keeps the whole thing in check until they’re both half asleep, breathing in each others’ air, noses bumping and not sure where one ends and the other begins.  
  
Jesus fuck but Bucky loves him. 100 years and he hasn’t ever stopped feeling like he caught a home run at a Dodgers home game. God he’s messed up inside but if Stevie Rogers still sees some good in him, it can’t be all bad.  
  
***  
  
When he wakes up, he’s on his back and Steve has a hand up his shirt, splayed over his stomach. He’s still asleep even though it’s 8am and Bucky doesn’t want to wake him up but he’s a little unsure, maybe a little scared. What happens at the Christmas party stays at the Christmas party? Too much eggnog maybe gave them a sugar high? Asgardian drugs??? Shit… he doesn’t _know_ …  
  
Bucky stretches and catches one blue eye cracking open at him, “Hey Sunshine,” Bucky says.  
  
Steve slides his hand up and maps Bucky’s ribs, leaning forward and kissing him again - just a little press of lips that lingers over-long and leaves Bucky’s heart racing in his chest.  
  
“Mmm, hey,” Steve groans, still half-asleep and dragging Bucky in closer.

  
“Coffee?” Bucky asks.  
  
“More sleep,” Steve hums, burying his face into Bucky’s shoulder and then digging in his teeth as Bucky gasps, “and you.”  
  
Well, fuck coffee.


	15. Calendar Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hey everyone - thanks for being so patient, I was out of town and only had a tablet to do updates/writing/edits on and as it turns out that was not very functional. I've been sitting on this one for a few days waiting to post it so I hope you enjoy it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: panic attack/breakdown description, talk of past trauma, talk of death/death wishing but not suicidal

New York is experiencing one of those days that happens in the fall and makes you question the very fabric of reality and also be deeply upset about global warming. It's sunny with a light breeze, and unseasonably warm, even this high up in the tower. It probably also helps that Tony has these lovely hidden heating elements that help keep the outdoor areas bearable even in the winter.  
  
A few people are lingering around, Aunt May is on a date, much to Peter's horror so Peter is taking refuge at the tower to talk his way through it at roughly a mile a minute and Bucky is starting to feel like he basically qualifies as Peter's uncle at this point just by time spent with the kid. Tony is working up a lather on his phone with god knows who or what but he's not happy so Bucky and Peter and Steve are avoiding him at the moment.  
  
He and Peter actually looked up a recipe for crepes and made them - or something like them - but with way too much nutella and are taking them out to where Steve is so they can share.  
  
It's nice, this whole thing - this cut out moment of domesticity, of getting to live quietly and cook snacks and have a nice afternoon.  
  
He rounds the corner, plates in hand, laughing at something Peter just said - and through the gauzy curtains he can see Steve at the black wrought iron table. He’s leaning forward, elbows balanced on the edge, his face in his hands and he’s staring at the city skyline behind his sunglasses.  
  
Bucky can’t move, just stares at him, like it’s a dream, but Peter’s there - still laughing and he can hear Tony still buried in an argument in the background and there’s no blood, no guns, no death. There's just Steve, at that table, silhouetted in the late afternoon sun and everything in Bucky narrows very rapidly.   
  
"You said that when you died, _this_ is what you wanted to wake up," Pierce says, low and thoughtful against his ear.  
  
Bucky takes a shuddering breath and the room swims in front of him.  
  
"But I hope you didn't think you'd go to heaven," Pierce says, laughing. "People like _you_ only go to hell."  
  
 _“Oh-“_ Bucky gasps.  
  
“Mr. Barnes?”  
  
Bucky stumbles and Steve is up, pushing into the house and catching him, the plates clattering to the ground in a spectacle of shattering ceramics and French delicacies.  
  
“Bucky?” Steve is terrified - the thread of his voice pulled tight to breaking and Bucky sinks into his arms.  
  
Tony is rushing over, phone call forgotten and kneeling next to them.  
  
"I'll clean this up," he says, "Peter can you grab the uh - some paper towels, yeah?"  
  
Peter looks between them and then goes, seeing the dismissal. Bucky looks glazed as he stares up at Steve and Steve looks so lost.  
  
"Why don't you get him upstairs, lay him flat," Tony says, voice gentle. "Water, a nice dark room. Familiar things."  
  
Steve nods along, fully numb, not even realising that Tony has gone through this - has had this happen, has been here before and is speaking out of the receiving end of experience. Bucky listens, although everything feels distant and surreal. He lets Steve carry him because he isn't fully sure he could walk right now if he tried which scares him a little... Steve hesitates in the hallway between their apartments before his lips thin into a line and he takes Bucky back to his place.  
  
He lays Bucky down in bed and then shuffles around next to him, propping up on one arm and looking down. Steve reaches up, pushes the hair out of Bucky's face and kisses his temple.  
  
It looks like Steve might be about to say something but he stops and lays down, curving against Bucky's side and grabbing his hand, threading their fingers together and just perching close like he can't bear to be too far away. Bucky can't quite put everything together. His mind is racing and even though his breathing is deep and even, images are flashing behind his eyes faster than he can piece them up and make sense of them. He feels trapped, a prisoner in his own body - like a night terror with sleep paralysis but he's wide the fuck awake. Words, scenes, sounds, they float through his periphery and brush his conscience. People, places, names, songs ... there they _go_ \- like a breath against the wind, gone before he can hear the whole thing but he knows it was there. Fuck fuck _fuck_... Lukin, Pierce, Zola... there's _more!_ There were _others._ There were _so many others._  
  
Oh _God_... he remembers the smell of a gun being fired, of the recoil in his hands, of the satisfaction that cascades through his cells down to his telomeres. _This_ is what's kept him alive so long - it's death. He's been living for killing - or living to kill - more accurately. He should have been dead again and again and again but he was put back together, and saved because he could murder.  
  
As you age your telomeres get shorter, that's cellular age - but what if they never grow short, if they aren't given the chance, if something stops them. It's not the only thing in that fucking serum he got but it's part of it.  
  
"He'll prove his worth, just you wait," Zola had hissed. That tiny, pompous, self-righteous little man thought he knew so much more, thought he was so much _better_ \- God Bucky hates him still so much.  
  
It's all so much - all of this, the weight of everything around him and of one fact that he _has_ to get straight. He blinks, his eyelids scraping over his dry eyes and he has to leave them closed for a moment, his eyes absolutely burning from staying open so long.  
  
And into the darkness and quiet of the room, Bucky whispers, "am I _dead?_ "  
  
Steve, God bless him, doesn't laugh, doesn't even smile, just buries his face into Bucky's chest and wraps around him and shakes his head, "no" he mumbles, squeezing Bucky around the ribs and not letting go. _"No,_ " he says again, more firmly but still just as muffled.  
  
They're quiet again, Bucky wrapping his arms around Steve and holding him. He lets his fingers rest against Steve's neck and he feels for a pulse out of habit, laying fingertips against the artery and letting it thud against them. It's even and strong and perfect and he counts the beats against the clock. Sixty beats per minute, hammering gently against his flesh hand.  
  
"I killed a Nazi in Paris in the 60's," Bucky says, voice rough. Steve doesn't move, just holds Bucky tighter to let him know he's listening. "She was pretending to be some philanthropic grandmother, masquerading in society, getting favors for being sweet and gentle and forking over money that she'd gotten from all the people she'd helped kill... the Americans hired me to take her out. They didn't want it to be traced back to them - they had relationships and appearances to keep up ... processes or whatever ... but fuck extradition and due process she was ruthless. They let me see her files Steve - I was bored and I read the whole thing and _she_ ..." Bucky bites his lip and digs his fingers into Steve's neck ever so slightly before realizing what he's doing and easing up.  
  
He takes a breath, and another, and another, counts them out like he was taught how to do, and calms himself down. "I didn't mind killing her - hell I would do it again. She was evil and had it coming... but I ... it was still pretty early, you know... before a lot of the later torture started... a lot of the mind fuckery. But I had been out awhile and the longer I was out of cryo, the longer I was working, the more the conditioning would slip." Bucky raises his other hand and strokes down Steve's back. "I stood in her room, looking out at the sunset over the sea... and there was a wrought iron table and I wished I was dead."  
  
Steve makes a noise in the back of his throat and moves to look up at Bucky and Bucky looks down at him, "because I figured you were probably dead too. You hadn't come found me yet... and you _always_ came and found me, Stevie... and I thought for _sure_ \- if I was dead that you'd be there, at least."  
  
"Buck--" Steve starts to interrupt but Bucky shakes his head and rolls his eyes up to stare at the ceiling.  
  
"But I knew I wasn't... I was alive and I hoped that if they ever let me die, I'd wake up to _that_ \- to you at that table, waitin' for me," Bucky swallows, "I thought for a second... _today_... I was just _so happy_ \- and there you were, at the table waiting for me and I thought for _sure_ ... they were never gonna let me be this happy alive, so I had to be dead."  
  
Steve surges up and knocks them sideways, tangling Bucky in his arms like he's ready for a fight, but he's just cradling Bucky to his chest, burying his face into his neck and clawing at his back like he can somehow get him closer if he just tries a little harder.  
  
"You're _here,_ " Steve says, voice rough.  
  
"Yeah, I am," Bucky says, still somewhat mystified as he cards his fingers through Steve's hair, "I'm alive."  
  
**  
  
There's another Christmas party sometime in mid-December, this one is for a different charity, one with lots of little kids and a lot of loud noises and flashes and Bucky stays home because he's scared. His therapist told him it's okay to not want to put himself in situations where he's not comfortable so he's trying that out this time. He gives his seat to MJ so she can go with Peter and she's secretly delighted, but makes it sound like it's a huge chore to have to find a nice dress on such short notice. Pepper swoops in like she hasn't been eavesdropping and Bucky waves after MJ who looks a little horrified at the turn of events.  
  
The night of, Steve drops by Bucky's apartment as he leaves and gives him a lingering kiss in the doorway, holding his hand and trying to behave when they both know that Steve has somewhere to be. Bucky isn’t used to casual affection, isn’t used to PDA, or just touch for the sake of it but he’s been finding out that Steve is. Apparently both of them are more than a little touch starved for their own reasons and it’s like the flood gates have been opened. There are times when it’s still platonic, still just laying on the couch together, but there are other nights that Bucky is fighting down spikes of arousal and panting as Steve touches him everywhere, whispering promises into the hard lines of his body.   
  
They haven’t made it very far, moving at a glacial pace because despite being thoroughly modern in some ways, it turns out that they’re both trying to keep it honest until they’re certain they won’t absolutely fuck it up. Bucky had whispered a trembling ‘stop’ one night when Steve’s hands had gone to his belt and Steve had jerked back as if burned until Bucky begged him to move slower. _Slower_ still. He wants to remember everything and he wants it all to feel right. Steve had held his hands down by the sides of his head and kissed him until he fell asleep instead, telling him he could have whatever he wanted.   
  
Steve rouses him back to the present.   
  
"I'll try and cut out early," Steve says, brushing their lips together like he's not ready to pull away. Bucky takes it as an invitation and wraps his hand around the back of Steve's neck and pulls him in close, deepening the kiss again until Steve is flattening both hands along Bucky's lower back and dragging him forward.  
  
"Take your time," Bucky mumbles, smirking. Steve groans and bumps their noses together, giving him a soft peck before he's forcing himself away and motioning towards the lift. Bucky crosses his arms over his chest, leans against the wall and watches, lets Steve get about three or four steps away before he's stealthing up behind him and walking with him to the elevator. He's barefoot, in his pajamas, and Steve sighs, hitting the button for the lift and wrapping his arms back around Bucky like he's only just seeing him off for the first time.  
  
"You aren't making his easy," Steve says, nuzzling into Bucky's jaw.  
  
"Was I supposed to?" Bucky asks, pretending to be serious, even as his hands are sliding down's Steve's chest.  
  
The door dings and opens behind them and Steve backs in, taking Bucky along with him as Bucky yelps and laughs and follows, crashing into Steve and letting Steve surround him, cup his jaw, wrap an arm around his waist and kiss the life out of him. Bucky just melts - relaxes into it and slings his arms around Steve's neck and smiles, opening his mouth as Steve fucks his tongue in, making the kiss a little more filthy than it needs to be  
  
The experimentation is nice, testing each others’ limits, finding the boundaries and whether they’re hard lines or just soft and fuzzy ‘maybes’. Bucky loves being manhandled by Steve, the way he can move him where he wants him, which he thinks must come from years of worrying about him making it through the night during a particularly bad bout of the flu. The show of strength is a testament of health and Bucky drinks it up.   
  
Steve has Bucky on his toes and pinned to the elevator wall when they get to ground level and Natasha is standing there looking smug and holding her hand out to the side. Clint signs _[fuck off]_ at her and drops $10 into her open palm as she silently walks away, Bucky blinking at the whole thing, Steve turning red and chuckling a little.  
  
"See you later," Steve says, pulling back, pausing and then leaning in with a smile, giving Bucky a soft kiss, "miss you."  
  
Bucky holds the door open on the lift, watching until Steve is out of sight and then he hits the button for his floor.  
  
"FRIDAY?" he asks, pressing against the back wall.  
  
"Yes, Sergeant Barnes?"  
  
"Can you send Captain Rogers a message."  
  
"Of course, Sergeant Barnes, what should I tell him?"  
  
"Tell him I'm waiting for him in his apartment when he gets done."  
  
"Yes, Sergeant Barnes."  
  
When he reaches their floor, Bucky lets himself into Steve's apartment and smiles, standing there for a moment. Steve's bought a tree for his place, set it up in the corner against the glass and strung it with lights. There's boxes of unopened ornaments laying under the tree that Bucky hopes they can put on together later, but for now he wants to be ready for something else.


	16. I'll Be Home for Christmas

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: sex, sex and more sex. violence. murder. death.

When Steve comes home, Bucky is on his phone playing Solitaire. He's a little drowsy, but he rallies, pushing up onto his elbows and looking at Steve. He's standing there with the door closing behind him, shocked but delighted and Bucky drops the phone, smiling up at him.  
  
"Did you...." Steve says, shrugging out of his suit jacket and loosening his bow tie.  
  
"Yeah, was feeling nostalgic... in a good way," Bucky says. He's dragged all the couch cushions onto the floor, and then raided the bedroom and linen closet too, building a bed on the floor. Steve steps out of his shoes, drops his jacket and vest, and untucks his shirt before falling down into the blankets and crawling over to Bucky.  
  
"You're amazing," Steve says, kissing Bucky, hovering over him until Bucky is dragging him down into the blankets.  
  
“How was the dinner?” Bucky asks. He's trying for casual, for polite banter but he can tell that Steve isn't much into reliving the evening's party chatter. It was probably fun but also, Bucky isn't going to complain if all Steve wants at the end of the night is him.  
  
Steve hums and shrugs out of his shirt, nuzzling into Bucky’s shoulder, brushing kisses against his skin, using his tongue to just barely trace the line of scar tissue against his prosthetic arm. God… Bucky shudders and slides an arm around Steve’s shoulders.  
  
“I thought about this the whole time you were gone,” Bucky says, his breathing going uneven as Steve raises the blankets and slides under them, his hand grazing down Bucky’s side, down over his hip to his thigh and then freezing and digging in suddenly.  
  
Steve groans and draws back with a hazy expression. This time he holds Bucky’s gaze as his fingers slip up, tracing from thigh to chest with no interference.  
  
“I’m overdressed,” Steve says, voice rough.  
  
“Fix it,” Bucky says.  
  
Steve’s breathing hitches, a whine starting low in his chest as he chants "Bucky... _Bucky._..." with slightly increasing urgency.  
  
“Hurry up.” Bucky smirks.  
  
Steve is stuck trying to kiss Bucky into the pillows and squirm out of his pants at the same time, an endeavor that isn’t impossible but that proves to be quite difficult. Bucky enjoys the struggle - smiles at how awkward Steve can be even in this incredible body, after all this time. But he’s not laughing anymore when Steve is naked and sliding on top of him, pressing him into the blankets with a breathless kiss.  
  
“Such a tease,” Steve groans, shifting to get comfortable as Bucky does the same until they slot together, Steve between Bucky’s legs. It’s such a hot, perfect fit and Bucky runs his hands down Steve’s back, enjoying the sensation of having Steve rock against him.  
  
“I jerked myself off thinking about this the other day,” Bucky confides, his face burning as he ducks his head to keep Steve from seeing. “We were makin’ out that morning before you had some meeting and when you left … I just …”  
  
“ _Bucky_ ….” Steve moans and rolls his hips experimentally, just for the friction, “let me touch you, _please.”_  
  
“I thought about your hand around me instead, about your mouth on my throat,” Bucky takes a deep breath and feels drunk without any help. “I want you to make me come.”  
  
Steve makes some kind of garbled sound between a moan and a growl and reaches down, wrapping his hand around both of them at once which makes Bucky’s toes curl. It’s not like he’s a virgin, but it’s been a long time and even longer since he was with anyone who he felt something with. Bucky’s legs fall open and he stretches back with a gasp, letting Steve jerk them off, Bucky’s hands fisting in the pillows as he rolls his hips up and takes what he wants.  
  
“I … fuck I…” Bucky whines, squeezing his eyes shut and biting his lip. Concentrating on not spilling because Steve is only just touching him and he can’t go off now it’s been literally 2 minutes and he refuses to be that quick and easy.  
  
But then Steve is leaning in and sucking just under Bucky’s jaw with a groan, “I want you to,” he mumbles, teeth scraping stubble, “I want to feel you _lose it_ like this.”  
  
“Jesus—“ Bucky arches up and grabs at Steve’s shoulders, squirming, crashing their mouths together, “more - give me _more._ ”  
  
Steve tightens his grip and Bucky almost sobs, “notlikethat,” he gasps, “in me - I want you _inside_ me.” And that’s when Steve stops and draws back, his eyes blown black as he licks his lips.  
  
“Yeah?”  
  
His voice is like sandpaper and Bucky wants him so bad he’s shaking with it. He remembers wanting Steve like this before the war - back in their stupid little flat that had no heat when they had to share a mattress and things were tough. He wanted Steve to take him apart and put him back together like a model plane and they never got the chance and right now he’s about to fucking lose his mind if Steve doesn’t finger him open and fuck him until it hurts.  
  
“Fuck Bucky, that what you want?” Steve growls, reaching between Bucky’s legs.  
  
Apparently he said that last part out loud.  
  
“Stevie _please_ ,” Bucky whimpers, twisting the sheets in flesh and metal hands.  
  
“I need lube for this though - think you can wait here a sec, let me go get it?”  
  
Bucky makes a frustrated sound but nods, covering his face and listening as Steve gets up and moves through the house. He can track him just by the sounds of his footfalls through the apartment and he smirks when he realizes how fast Steve is moving. Bucky cracks an eye open when the steps come to a stop at the end of their little living room nest and he pushes up on his elbows to watch as Steve drops to his knees and crawls up the length of Bucky’s body.  
  
“O- _oh_ ,” Bucky stutters out. He’s losing some of his faculties as Steve pushes his legs open and kisses up the inside of one thigh, lingers over his hipbones with his tongue… fuck he’s starting to short out a little.  
  
“Steve— _Steve_ come on,” Bucky begs, wrapping one leg around Steve’s shoulders and trying to pull him close to speed things up. Not that Steve is going to listen to him. He’s going to take his time and do whatever he wants - that’s just how Steve operates. But Bucky, no matter how impatient he is, will always defer and let Steve have his way - will sit back and take a deep breath and let Steve lavish his body with attention that he’s long denied it. Bucky will even whimper and pull Steve’s hair, and then gasp into his mouth when Steve gets the show on the road and slips one finger into Bucky’s body.  
  
“Yes-oh fuck _yes._ ” Just an exhalation, a whispered hymn.  
  
Steve takes his time with this too, strings Bucky along until one finger is two, and two is three and Bucky is spread out on the sheets panting and fucking himself onto Steve’s hand. Bucky can’t help but watch - not himself, but the look on Steve’s face - how it shifts from something soft and determined, to something dark and covetous. There’s nothing else he’d rather be doing, nowhere else he’d rather be, no person he could imagine doing this to him and unraveling him into such broken threads.  
  
“In me — Steve, _in me_ ,” Bucky pants, reaching down and shoving at Steve’s hand because it’s not enough anymore. And bless him, but Steve doesn’t tease. Maybe he’s past teasing himself, but he lines up and sinks in - torturously slow, letting Bucky writhe and feel it, feel every inch.  
  
And Bucky thinks that Steve is going to kiss him, but he doesn’t - instead he sits back and watches the way Bucky pants and moans, runs his hands all over every square inch of skin he can reach, and Bucky just blinks stupidly back up at him. Like he can’t even believe this is happening still. Steve just drinking him in - taking pleasure in letting Bucky lose himself but under controlled circumstances.  
  
It’s slow going though - Bucky is painfully tight and can’t seem to relax until Steve is bowed over his body and mumbling filth into his ear, rolling his hips in waves, letting Bucky adjust until he’s dying to get more.  
  
Steve gives him that too, fucks him hard and deep, shallow and slow, everything in between. Lets Bucky claw down his back, bite at his shoulder and cry into the pillows until he’s coming untouched. Steve is relentless by that point - fucks him through it and Bucky feels like he’s disappearing - that he’s maybe just becoming the soft reflection of the Christmas lights on the window glass he’s so fucking amorphous. He feels boneless and spent and strung out on an orgasm that had been years in the making and Steve is still rocking into him and dragging it out until Bucky is pulling his hair and biting “ _come in me”_ against Steve’s throat.  
  
As it turns out, Steve still obeys orders. Doesn’t even care about chain of command.  
  
The come down is a little brutal - the two of them sticky and sweaty and too goddamn stubborn to move. Bucky kissing Steve until he’s sure their lips are bruised and that he’s going to permanently have the shape of Steve’s mouth impressed into his own. Which isn’t a complaint, just an observation.  
  
Steve pushes Bucky’s hair out of his face, kisses his brow.  
  
“You _jerk_.”  
  
“Hm?” Bucky sighs and cracks an eye open at him.  
  
“I think I’m in love with you.”  
  
****  
  
Steve unboxes the decorations and lets Bucky sit there, carefully threading ornament hooks through the bulbs as he works on fixing the garland around the tree. They put on AMC which Tony ribs them about constantly but it at least feels like a real holiday for once. Steve didn't have any of his Ma's stuff, so he'd had to get everything new, but apparently someone had helped him find a bunch of vintage looking shit because everything that Bucky picks up feels like it's slightly out of time. Not that he's complaining, he's a little delighted. Modernity is nice for a lot of things, but shit does he get nostalgia pains for certain stuff every once in awhile.  
  
"I really like the blue ones," Bucky says, holding the one he just hooked up for Steve to examine. It's mirrored and catches the light reflecting from the tree and Bucky blinks slowly before he hears the gunshots.  
  
His heart is racing as he keeps his breathing in check, back up against the wall listening for footfalls. It's only a matter of time - it's got to be coming. They can't be far behind him.  
  
A door crashes open on the right and Bucky slinks into a recessed alcove, checking his gun and aiming without thinking, stepping into the middle of the hallway and opening fire. One. Two. _Three_. They hit the ground in quick succession and all that's left is the crackle of a radio call unanswered. Bucky runs forward, ripping their ammo and weapons off, shoving them into his rucksack and making a break for the door they opened behind him.  
  
"Who's next, _fuckers_...." he hisses, already holding a new magazine in his teeth as he stalks ahead, gun aimed and waiting. He's silent, moving in stealth down the hall, and he knows everyone else is careless. They're scared shitless because they know he's the one out there. He takes two more steps and hears a sudden intake of breath. He freezes, turns to the left and takes a shot. The silenced gun lets a 'pfft' as the man hidden in the shadows slides to the ground with nothing more than a gurgling exhale.  
  
Bucky remembers this hall, they walked him down this hall after the last mission - told him he was going to go in the cell, wait it out until his next mission. There's three doors left between him and the outside, but they're close together. He moves, humming to himself as the manic fatigue of the last two hours of his escape start to catch up to him. The struggle of getting the cell doors open, the waiting game until he could disarm the guards and take their weapons. He's going on pure adrenaline and he knows he's got something else pumping through his veins now too - something they put there that's giving him the energy to keep fucking going.  
  
He's their little toy soldier. Wind him up and watch him go.  
  
They just didn't think he'd ever go off on them.  
  
" _I'll be home for Christmas_ ," Bucky sings, twisting the rifle around in his hands and using the butt of it to smash the glass window of the second to last door. " _You can count on me_."  
  
He grits his teeth and uses the metal arm to wrench the lock free and then it's in sight. The last door.  
  
Alarms are blaring but he can't even hear them anymore. All he can hear is the steady, relentless beat of his heart. One more door. _One more door._ _**One more door.**_  
  
He doesn't fuck around anymore - runs for it and tears the handle off with a scream. There's snow on the ground outside and he takes a shuddering breath, his lungs stinging with the icy air. But he's loving it. It's so much better than that dank, moldy shit in the basement. But he isn't clear yet - he's not free - there's people firing and he laughs, hoists the rifle up and fires off shot after shot, taking out two sniper nests without even thinking about it and then reloading just to empty shells into people as they advance. If HYDRA wants to play with big guns then he's more than happy to show them first hand just what those guns do.  
  
One of the sniper nests has an anti-aircraft defense gun and he's going to use it for something else. Something he's been thinking of day in and day out. It's loaded with fucking missiles basically - he's seen them fire it and they were stupid enough to think he was some blank canvas that didn't know what the fuck he was looking at.  
  
Idiots. Fucking _idiots_.  
  
Bucky scales the tower and finds it - stares at it for a moment and then sees the surge of agents that are looking for him start swarming out of the building.  
  
"Well that won't do..." he murmurs, hoisting the artillery into the gun and then pointing it, down ... down... _down_ ... until it's aimed right at the facility he just clawed his way out of. There's piles of bodies in there... and there's about to be more and he doesn't feel a thing except that he has to find Steve. If Steve hasn't found him yet.... he must still be looking - it's only been a week and he can't let him put himself in danger like this.  
  
Bucky fires. Once, twice, three times. Nailing the facility in weak points that raise flames 3 stories high. The heat is intense and the last one detonates something that Bucky never counted on, sending him flying from his perch and over the fence into the woods beyond. He doesn't remember the flying part. Or the landing part. He remembers waking up with the taste of blood in his mouth and the vision of Steve swimming over him.  
  
"It's me, Bucky, _Steve_."  
  
"Steve?"  
  
He'd laid there in the snow, choking on his own blood with a smile, "I'll be home for Christmas, you can count on me."  
  
Steve had smiled and then like a recording frozen, rewound and played back, "It's me, Bucky, _Steve_."  
  
Bucky's vision blurred, "Steve?"  
  
"I blew 'em up Stevie," he says, coughing, rolling to his side and spitting it into the snow. "Blew 'em the fuck up."  
  
"It's me, Bucky _, Steve._ "  
  
Bucky makes a wounded sound and slams his hand down, fist cracking into the layer of ice as he squeezes his eyes shut. He's not there, he's never there he's just fucking wishing and hoping and dreaming and Steve isn't there. But Bucky's gonna fucking find him. He's gonna find him and bring him home and then he's never gonna let Steve sign up for a war ever again. He's never gonna let him out of his sight again. Not once. Not even for a minute - he's gonna keep tabs on him like Sarah Rogers always said he should - Steve's a damn handful sometimes but Bucky's willin' to make that sacrifice.  
  
Shit shit shit _shit.._.  
  
He drags himself up and through the forest, moving in slow motion, keeping himself awake singing I'll be home for Christmas in a whisper.  
  
Bucky rolls his head to the side and sees Steve, he looks like someone ate the last slice of apple pie he's so sad. But he's still there. Right _there_.  
  
"They took a week to catch me. That's when I found out... it'd been _years_ since I'd been captured, not a week or two. I knew for sure then. That I was alone."  
  
There's a shattered blue ornament on the floor by the tree and Bucky is laying in the couch cushion bed they made the night before. Steve pushes his hair back out of his face and kisses him, pulling him close.  
  
"You're home this year, back in New York and everything," he says, bumping their noses together.  
  
Bucky sighs and runs a hand down Steve's arm, "Anywhere with you is home."  
  
Steve smiles and shifts again, tangling them together until they're pressed as close as they can get. "And no one is going to come and take you from me again."  
  
Bucky can't help the sad disbelieving smile, it's not that he doesn't trust Steve, it's just that he knows what HYDRA is capable of, who they really are... what lengths they'll go to if they're really still out there in any capacity.  
  
But then Steve grabs his chin and forces Bucky to look at him, "I'll kill anyone who tries," he whispers. Which liquifies Bucky's spine because he knows Steven Grant Rogers - and he knows he's not a man who kills, or wants to kill, or who takes joy in it and would rather diplomatically resolve conflict wherever possible so that he can get what he really wants. So that he would lay that aside and make an exception... and that _Bucky_ is his exception is just _a lot._ Bucky starts to say something but Steve cuts him off, kissing him and humming, "you know you'd do the same."  
  
Bucky smiles, he would. _He has._


	17. Heart to Break

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> additional warnings: sex, body painting, body worship

Bucky slides his stool up until he bumps Tony's hip with his own. He doesn't say anything, just hovers, waiting, because he knows eventually Tony will crack if he just waits him out another minute or so. But today, Tony is managing to keep himself pretty in check and that sucks but Bucky is nothing if not resilient. He puts his chin on Tony's shoulder and tries to watch what he's doing.

Tony sighs. Bucky smirks.

"God ALRIGHT, get off -- what do you want!" Tony shoves at him and Bucky laughs, letting Tony shove at him.

"Guess who got laid."

"Oh my God, FINALLY," Tony slumps and then claps his hands, "Dum-E, get the -- do the THING--"

Dum-E rolls over and pulls a party cracker, showering Bucky in long trails of red and gold tinsel, along with a cloud of matching confetti. Bucky looks down and picks up a larger piece of it off his pants

"Is this a custom-made Iron Man Christmas Cracker?" Bucky asks, glancing up at Tony in disbelief.

"What's really surprising here is that you're shocked by that," Tony says, dusting some of the glitter out of Bucky's hair and then giving up. "So spill - was it everything you hoped and then some? Choir of angels singing etc etc?"

"I want to strangle you," Bucky says cheerfully, leaning against Tony's work table and smiling, "but also yes. Fuck yes it was - I wanted him back before the war, when he was just that dumb skinny kid who was going to die of an asthma attack if you looked at him funny... it's a little surreal to realise now that he can hold me down and-" Bucky stops and motions with his hand, "extrapolate from there."

Tony snorts and goes to grab them two mugs of coffee, because incidentally, Stark is the only other person who makes coffee that Bucky will drink.

"Cheers," Tony says, clinking their mugs together, "proud of you for getting what you want. Namely, dat ass."

Bucky chokes a little and smirks, "what makes you think I got his ass?"

Tony's jaw drops and he holds a hand to his chest in shock, "Mr. Barnes .... are you insinuating what I think you are?"

Bucky just smiles and shrugs.

 

***

 

New Years Eve is usually a crescendo of activity. Of Tony throwing lavish parties, of everyone dressing up and heading out to various functions, of glamour and champagne and a lot of fake smiles but this year no one really feels like putting up with that shit. A couple of days beforehand, Tony sends out an e-vite to everyone that just says "PTSD Pajama Pizza Party for NYE. Bring your favorite movie. Fuck the press."

Bucky marks himself as RSVP and then reaches over, takes Steve's phone and also marks him as RSVP.

"What if I had other plans that night?" Steve asks as Bucky hands back his phone.

Bucky raises an eyebrow and waits.

"I _don't_ but-" 

"Mm, _there_ it is," Bucky leans back into Steve's chest and surfs around on his phone, playing on twitter, liking a bunch of what Tony calls 'thirst posts.' There's a lot of shit out there about the Avengers and Bucky enjoys screencapping particularly nasty ones to send to his friends when they least expect it. One time he got Sam to snort coffee out his nose in the middle of one of Fury's little briefing sessions. Steve wraps an arm around his chest and kisses into his hair.

“You said you were going to tell me something earlier,” Steve says, changing the subject. 

Bucky sighs and stares up at the ceiling, clicking his phone off.

“It’s about my arm.”

Steve hums and runs his hand along the new prosthetic. This one is more responsive than the old one and the plates ripple and flex under Steve’s attention.

“I’m scared of it sometimes,” Bucky admits quietly, “it’s still a weapon, after all. Even with the upgrades, maybe even especially _because_ of the upgrades. And it’s nicer, Steve, it’s better, right? So much better. But I can’t help but miss that old arm.”

The last part comes out quietly and Steve’s fingers pause in their stroking and he rests his chin on Bucky’s shoulder, just holding him there in his arms. They don’t say anything for a moment but then Steve says, “I think that’s normal. To miss something that was part of you for so long. 

“But I didn’t – I didn’t ask for that arm, it was just shoved on me and it caused me pain and did terrible things and it … there was a lot of bad associated with it, so I don’t know why I can’t just – why I can’t just appreciate what I have now and let that one go,” Bucky says, voice tinged with frustration.

“You didn’t choose it, but you still came to accept it as part of you,” Steve says, “and just because we got rid of it overnight doesn’t mean you can just erase the feelings around it overnight.”

Bucky nods and tips his head back into Steve’s chest, staring up at the ceiling. “Does it make me a bad person if sometimes I want it back, just because I feel like it’s something I know, that it’s something I’m prepared for, that it’s something I understand….”

“Being afraid of change doesn’t make you a bad person,” Steve says.

His fingers trace along the seams in Bucky’s arm for a moment before he sighs and then moves to stand up, patting Bucky on the arm, “I think I have an idea, wanna wait here for a sec?”

“Yeah, sure,” Bucky shrugs and sits up to let Steve move and watches him shuffle through the apartment. He forces himself not to listen, not to pay attention to where he’s going, or what he might be doing, instead he just focuses on the good things about the day. He’s happy, he’s having a good time, he’s with people he loves, people appreciate him, he’s a human.

  
When Steve returns, he’s holding a paintbrush and a tube of cheap acrylic paint in bright red.

Bucky looks at the paint, then looks up at Steve and Steve points to his arm, “lets give you a little piece of the past, huh?”

It takes him a minute but then Steve spells it out, “I’m pretty sure I can paint a star without fucking up too bad.”

Bucky swallows and nods, pulling his shirt off and standing up at the same time so he can wrap Steve in his arms and kiss him, hold his face and force his mouth open and really taste him. Sometimes he worries he hasn’t done enough penance, that he hasn’t really fought for this or earned it or whatever but right now he doesn’t care because Steve Rogers thinks he has and that’s enough. That’s enough for now and he’s going to let that be enough for him.

When Bucky pulls back, Steve settles them back on the couch and takes his time carefully freehanding a red star on his shoulder. He’s always been talented and he manages the simple design easily; five gentle points. He starts to cap the paint but Bucky stops him and puts a hand on his thigh.

“Wait… wait will you add something?”

“Yeah, what should I add?” Steve asks, holding the brush aloft and waiting.

“Put some rings around it – like your shield. 

Steve holds his gaze and Bucky for the first time in a long time feels a blush start to burn up his face just at the way Steve looks at him right then. Steve isn’t laughing or teasing, or angry, he looks heated and Bucky swallows.

“You want me on you?” Steve asks, voice low.

Bucky nods, biting his lip and Steve looks possessive and intense. He does it though, carefully paints two red rings around Bucky’s red star and sits back to look at it momentarily as Bucky shifts nervously.

“Come here,” Steve says, ditching the paint on the table and dragging Bucky half into his lap, positioning them so that Bucky’s back is to his chest.

His mouth moves lower as his hand spreads out and his fingertips brush a nipple, making Bucky’s breath hitch a little.

Apparently, it turns out that Steve has a lot of pent-up feelings when it comes to Bucky. There had been a little bit of talking between the first time and the second ... especially since Bucky couldn't keep his mouth shut and told Steve all about his little hyper-fixation on how he'd wanted that for years. Steve hadn't been able to let that part go... not that Bucky wants him to.

"Do you like it? Marking me?” Bucky asks, trying to keep his breathing even as Steve rolls his nipple between his thumb and forefinger. He's been tortured before he _should_ be able to stay perfectly still but Steve touching him drives all his prior training out the window. Instead he's arching back and pressing into it, fingers digging into Steve's thighs to hold himself upright as he rolls his whole body and moans. 

Steve makes a low sound and noses into his neck, "I love marking you, I love seeing something on you showing that you’re mine," he hums, shifting so that he can slide his other hand down the front of Bucky's sweats and cup his erection.

Bucky's cellphone clatters to the ground as he focuses on grinding his hips back, circling them like he's some kind of call girl.

"Bucky...." Steve strokes him in time with his movements, sucks little bites into his throat that have Bucky gasping. He can feel Steve's hard cock pressing against his ass and he kind of just wants Steve to shove his pants down and take him but fuck this feels so good he doesn't want to stop either.

"Think you can come like this?" Steve asks. He’s careful to avoid touching any of the fresh paint but Bucky can still see smears of finger and hand prints on his body from where it was on Steve’s hands and he’s so turned on by that.

"Yeah," Bucky says, voice already shaky, "fuck yes, just keep touching me, Stevie."

It's hot and close and Bucky can feel the sweat beading on his lower back, wants to strip out of his constricting clothes, wants to just be naked and riding Steve on the couch. Instead he's tipping his head back on Steve's shoulder, panting into his ear and stuck between how good it feels to have Steve's dick against his ass and Steve's hand jerking him off.

"Please... please...yours….yours…." Bucky whines, voice coming out with a little sob in it because he can't quite stop it from happening. He's so worked up and it's happening so fast that he doesn't even have time to really warn Steve that he's about to come. It's an all too sudden coiling heat in his spine that makes him cry out and go stiff in Steve's arms and Steve, bless him, just jerks him slowly through it.

"That's it," Steve mumbles, kissing down Bucky's shoulder and making a pleased little hum.

"Steve – you—“ Bucky twisting enough to offer a messy kiss and Steve nips at his bottom lip.

“I’ll wait until later… I want to take my time.”

Bucky blinks dazedly ahead, trying to parse that information and not quite being able to keep it straight in his head. “Hm?”

“Wait for the paint to dry so I can hold you down and fuck you,” Steve says, nosing at Bucky’s shoulder and Bucky squirms, turning in Steve’s arms so he can kiss him and straddle his lap, wrap arms around Steve’s neck. He really loves this. It's so easy and feels good and maybe he can start to listen when being told that he deserves this, deserves feeling this way, being made to feel good.

"Incredible," Steve rasps, dragging his teeth along Bucky's jaw, "you're incredible."

Bucky settles there, relaxing into Steve's hold and feeling drowsy and satisfied. "Tell me you’re mine,” Bucky growls sleepily, pulling at Steve’s hair. 

Steve smiles against his mouth, hands fanning along Bucky’s lower back, “I always have been.”

 

**** 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've had a WEEK. My computer died and then my car died so I spent a lot of time making genius bar appointments and test driving new SUVs so it hasn't been GREAT. >:| sorry for chapter delays everyone. Also this fic might expand by one or two chapters we will SEE. I was going to try and wrap it up in this one and the next but there was one more thing i wanted to hit on that I just can't see fitting? So... bad news, not done, good news, more porn?


	18. Cape Canaveral

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warnings for sleep paralysis, torture, and fluff

Bucky manages to keep going to therapy. Some days it's easier than others. He occasionally shows up and sits in silence for ten minutes and doesn't know what to say, he doesn't always need to have someone walk with him there, and rarely does he feel so overwhelmed by the results that he needs to stop halfway through and just take a breather. Maybe that's progress, but Bucky doesn't feel like it is. He knows it's ridiculous to expect a cure after so short a time, but he just hoped that there might be something more tangible to the experience. Bucky still has nightmares and flashbacks, still occasionally feels untethered from reality and his own existence... and he tells his therapist that he worries that he's going to be broken forever, that this is permanent. After all the work that Shuri did he thought... that might be the end of it. But what it turns out is that it was just the beginning. Her work was never found lacking - she did exactly what she said she would do ... she took the Winter Soldier out. But what was left was Bucky Barnes....who had been held hostage in his own mind for 100 years. 

His therapist tells him something important that day, that it's okay to be hurt, it's okay to feel damaged. Those are valid. But none of that makes him less human or less deserving of love and care.

Maybe he doesn't believe that all the way, but he has people around who keep reinforcing it.

Tony, always making sure he has something to do with his hands and someone to talk to about literally anything. It can be history, technology or his sex life and Tony approaches it with the same level of curiosity and enthusiasm that makes Bucky laugh every time. But when Bucky needs someone to be serious, Tony is there too. He has a way of just squeezing Bucky's good shoulder and saying "I'm here" that means so much more and Bucky can't pinpoint when exactly it happened but he really fucking loves that little shit.

And Peter ... Peter is halfway between a son and a younger brother and Bucky wants to either ground him or take him for his first beer and he just... he makes everything irreverent and buoyant. He brings a lightness into Bucky's life that was missing before and when he gets embarrassed, Bucky feels a sense of righteous delight.

Shuri, who may not always be there in person but who still regularly snapchats him pictures of his goats. She sends pictures of her and T'Challa in the lab, of the sunset in Wakanda, of Okoye when she isn't looking. Their shared history keeps him grounded when he's feeling too out of body and she reminds him of all the future really has to offer. 

Sam Wilson, best friend, who just can't seem to keep his wayward idiot friends in line but still tries anyways. He is maybe the greatest man that Bucky has ever known and he does things for everyone around him whether they're his oldest friend, or a total stranger who just needs it. Bucky admires him for everything he's done, for all the things he _will_ do. Sometimes he's not sure how Sam finds the energy to wake up in the morning, run with Steve, work at the VA, and still make it to an Avengers meeting but there he is, and in between all those things he still loves all of them with a devoted, fierce loyalty that means he would do anything for them. Bucky vows to try to be more like him.

And Steve.

Shit. _Steve_.

Bucky looks up at him, where he's lounging on the couch and probably playing a game on his Stark pad and all Bucky can think about is how Steve is his everything. It's not just the shared lived experience, the lifetime of memories, growing up together, or being friends for a century .... Steve is just... _his_. He wakes up in the morning and he wants to see Steve's face. He wants to see him smile, wants to sip coffee together and listen to him whine about how the bacon is too crispy. It's absurd sometimes, the way he feels. Or maybe not absurd, maybe inevitable. 

"Are we going to dinner with Tony and other Steve still?" Steve asks, glancing up and catching Bucky staring.

Bucky snorts, "other Steve?" 

Steve smirks, "the Strange one." 

Bucky closes his eyes and falls back into the couch, pinching the bridge of his nose with a groan, "how long have you been waiting to use that."

"Awhile," Steve says, laughing and throwing his tablet to the side, crawling over Bucky as he chuckles, nosing his way up Bucky's torso until he can kiss him. "I don't mind waiting." 

"What are you waiting for right now?" Bucky asks, threading fingers through Steve's hair and scratching lightly at his scalp.

Steve licks over his bottom lip and gives Bucky a soft look, "I _was_ waiting to get back from dinner but maybe I won't."

"Maybe you shouldn't."

Bucky pulls him down into a slow, heated, filthy kiss that has Steve pressing him into the couch and sliding their bodies together with a low hum.

"Whatever you want," Steve says, kissing the words into Bucky's mouth and sliding his hands up under his shirt to push it off in a rush.

 

***

 

They are 10 minutes late to dinner and Tony just looks exceptionally amused while Stephen looks somewhere between annoyed and pleased which is.... his default look so Bucky can't really tell the difference.

"I went ahead and ordered a wine," Tony says, motioning towards the bottle on the table, "perk of showing up on time."

Bucky winks and Tony snorts. Steve sits down, blushing down his neck and into his collar and Stephen looks sideways at him. "Did they put us together because of the Steve thing?"

"Probably," Steve huffs, rubbing his hands over his thighs. 

"Well and this way we can gossip about you without you overhearing," Bucky points out, leaning in towards Tony. 

"Mm, and I like looking at both of you," Tony says, lifting his wine glass with a lascivious smile.

"Oooh, same," Bucky taps their glasses together and Stephen sighs, looking at both of them with disappointment and then looking to Steve.

"We can always just get our own table and have a civilised, adult dinner."

"We could," Steve says, glancing around as if trying to sort one out. "Certainly one with less leering."

But they don’t move away, and Bucky spends half of dinner either laughing with Tony or flirting shamelessly with Steve. It’s new and it’s different and it’s old and just the same and he can’t help but feel a kind of rush at it all. That this is his life and this is reality and this is what he wakes up to every day. Sometimes, maybe, it will be different, and it will suck a lot but when he’s fighting and he’s struggling, this is what it’s all for. It doesn’t feel meaningless.

When they leave, Steve slides their hands together, linking their fingers as he smiles at Bucky, “you have a good time?”

“Yeah,” Bucky says, and he really means it. He thinks maybe this is what life should have been like all along – being happy, living, enjoying, loving – but he thinks of all the years that were gone in between and he wonders if he would have been able to do it without Steve.

Bucky squeezes their hands together and pulls Steve around until they’re stopped and he can lean in for a kiss. Chaste. Soft. Easy. Just enough to be a taste and then he’s pulling away with a shy smile all his own and Steve is watching him like he’s something wonderful.

“I love you,” Steve says, as if he’s just catching up.

“Because I kissed you in the middle of the sidewalk?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow.

“That too,” Steve says.

 

***

 

“What _I_ don’t understand is,” Pierce says, pacing slowly at the end of the bed, “how you think this can possibly end well for either of you.”

Bucky swallows.

Pierce sits down by Bucky’s feet and pats them where they’re under the blanket, “you have a mission, and you should complete it – sooner rather than later.”

Bucky can feel the words trying to come out of his mouth but there’s no sound, just his jaw working overtime to make something happen and then silence. Pierce smiles at his frustration, his hand stroking along Bucky’s ankle and then snapping around it like a vice.

“You’re going to kill him rather you want to or not.”

Immobile. That’s what’s going on – he’s completely immobilized. Maybe it’s some kind of neurotoxin or they’ve got him strapped down but he doesn’t remember them putting him in the chair – how long has he been out? How long has he been here?

His fingers feel numb, a tingling sensation in both hands that he’s never felt before and he can feel the sting of tears in his eyes as Pierce shakes his head and tsks at him. “I thought we wiped all the emotions out of you.”

Bucky gasps and it feels like the first breath he’s taken in hours.

Steve is sitting up next to him in the dark, one hand on his forehead, sweeping sweat soaked hair off his face looking concerned.

“I think you were having a nightmare.”

Bucky makes a sound in the back of his throat and reaches a shaking hand out, brushing Steve’s wrist. He can tell there are tear tracks drying on his face and he feels like a raw, exposed nerve. It’s not the first time in his life he’s had sleep paralysis, or bad dreams but it’s the first time he’s woken up with someone there who made it slip away so quickly.

Steve shuffles down the bed until he’s laying down again and can spoon up alongside Bucky,

“Baby,” Steve’s voice is soft and his hands are wrapping around Bucky’s torso, spanning his ribs and making Bucky think about breathing. All he can focus on is the way Steve’s fingers fit between bones and muscle, how the careful measure he takes of Bucky’s body makes Bucky’s blood start to pump again.

  
“Tell me it’s over,” Bucky says, voice rough, “tell me I’m done.”

  
Steve leans in, kissing the back of Bucky’s neck and whispering, “you’re done, it’s over.”

 

***

 

Impromptu video games are happening on the community floor which means Sam is making Steve look bad at Mario Kart. Steve has better hand/eye coordination but the problem is he doesn't know how to translate that to video games and Sam absolutely is taking advantage of that... which Bucky thinks is ... KIND OF hilarious? He feels bad for Steve but not bad enough to interrupt his entertainment.  
  
Bucky only plays Sam every once in awhile ... something about how two snipers playing each other probably isn't healthy. Instead Bucky is reading  _Babylon Revisited_ stretched out on the couch behind Steve and Sam.  
  
"Rainbow Road!?" Sam yells.  
  
"I like the song!!" Steve shouts back.  
  
"Okay you're about to also like dying a lot."  
  
"So Extra..."  
  
"Whoa whoa whoa -- hold up," Sam hits pause and turns to Steve, "who taught you that word?"  
  
"Bucky."  
  
Bucky raises an eyebrow, looking up over his book as he reaches down, carding metal fingers through Steve's hair, "hm?"  
  
"You taught him the word 'extra?'"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Who taught _you_ that?" Sam asks, looking incredulous.  
  
"Shuri."  
  
Sam pinches the bridge of his nose and groans, "she would. She absolutely would. I'm going to tell her brother about this - she's influencing the geriatrics around this place and I don't need that kind of shit in my life. It was bad enough when it was just Steve but now there's two of you and I can't do this."  
  
"It's not that bad," Steve says, tipping back into Bucky's touch, "c'mon - start the race." He elbows Sam until Sam gives in and unpauses the game.  
  
Bucky just shakes his head with a smile, pulling his hand back to flip the page and the words shake and fall off. A few letters cling helplessly to the edge of the page as if clawing their way back on but the sound of Pierce’s voice rattles them off until they collapse into Bucky’s lap and he winces.  
  
"Three weeks."  
  
Alexander Pierce rolls his eyes, impatience written across his face as he crosses his arms over his chest, "and he still has another four weeks of work left. Did no one do the math?" His voice ticks up towards the end going from casual questioning to angry yelling almost seamlessly. It's a hell of a talent to be able to slip from one to the other without anyone seeing it coming until it's too late. "He has another four fucking weeks of work and he's going to be goddamn useless!"  
  
Pierce narrows his eyes and Bucky blinks up at him, blank.  
  
"Do you think you can keep it together that long?" Pierce asks, kicking Bucky's legs apart and leaning in close, inspecting.  
  
Bucky nods, eyes downcast.  
  
"Good. Because if you don't, we might have to be a little more drastic in our re-conditioning efforts."  
  
He shoves Bucky back into the chair and stalks from the room, slamming the door behind him.  
  
The exhale in the wake of his departure is palpable as everyone but Bucky relaxes. He knows better.  
  
The door opens again and Pierce opens fire, the two specialists who had been in charge going down hard with little more than a shout of surprise. Bucky doesn't even flinch.  
  
Needs must.  
  
Alexander looks around the room as if making sure he's set the right tone and example and Bucky can tell fear is rippling through everyone left. It's how Pierce works - he doesn't want people to adore him, or to follow him because he's right. He wants people to fear him. In that moment - he has exactly what he wants in the room.  
  
"The asset is mine and don't ever forget that," Pierce says.  Bucky swallows and Pierce catches his gaze, "you didn't answer me, Bucky."  
  
"I--" Bucky stammers as Pierce moves across the room, graceful as ever until he's right there. Bucky can feel the heat of him this close and he feels sick to his stomach.  
  
"What are you?" Pierce growls, raising the gun until it's right between his eyes.  
  
"The Asset," Bucky whispers.  
  
"And who do you belong to?" Pierce asks, cocking the gun.  
  
"Alexander Pierce, the Handler."  
  
"And where are you right now?" Steve whispers, thumb stroking over Bucky's cheek, wiping his tears away.  
  
Bucky gasps and jolts upright and Steve grabs him. It's the worst feeling in the world, the worst flashback he's had and he can't bring himself to talk about it, to describe what's just happened to him, where his mind went. Instead, Bucky is grabbing at Steve's back, hands fisting in his shirt, burying his face into Steve's chest as he takes heaving breaths, trying to will it all away. None of it is real anymore it's gone. All of it happened but it's past - it's done. _It's done_.  
  
"Pierce is dead," Bucky gasps.  
  
"I don't know, Bucky, am I?"  
  
Bucky looks frantically over Steve's shoulder and for a brief shining moment there he is, hands in his pockets, smiling like he owns the world and he's walking towards Bucky only to dissolve into dust motes in the sun.  
  
"Pierce is dead," Steve replies, smoothing his hands down Bucky's back and dragging him closer, "he's really _really_ dead."  
  
Sam kneels down and rubs between Bucky's shoulder blades, "got a glass of water here with your name on it, might even negotiate with you for some nutter butters."  
  
"I hate nutter butters," Bucky says, voice muffled into Steve's body.  
  
"I know, that's why I brought them," Sam says, "because I love them and I know your ass won't eat them."  
  
Steve chuckles and settles fully onto the ground, holding Bucky half across his lap, "I have some mint oreos."  
  
"I knew I loved you for a reason."  
  
"For mint oreos?"  
  
"For mint oreos."  
  
Sam sighs and pushes at Bucky's shoulder, "that's rude man, I brought you water."  
  
"You're alright," Bucky says with a grumble.

 

***

 

Steve walks with him to therapy that week because Bucky is feeling really raw. The nightmare and then the flashback on the couch were vivid and deep and he hates that they’re affecting him like they are but he knows it’s just his mind playing tricks on him.

  
Healing, as it turns out, isn’t a linear process.

Sometimes he goes backwards, sometimes sideways, but he knows eventually he’ll get there. He’s not sure where that is but he knows that he keeps feeling better along the way. That every time he opens another door and asks questions and talks about it, he feels different, somehow relieved. It’s okay to not be okay – whatever that means. 

To Bucky, it means he doesn’t blame himself for the flashbacks anymore, but when they happen, he takes them in stride, writes down whatever he can remember and he talks about them with Steve or Sam or Tony or Clint. They all have their own traumas to deal with but they’re there for each other all the same and they make it so much less lonely. 

Today his therapist tells him that whatever abuse he suffered isn’t his fault and to always remember that he belongs to himself first and foremost. No one else unless he gives permission can have any part of him. When he asks if he gave Pierce permission by saying he belonged to him at some point in the past – his therapist makes a derisive sound and reminds him that he can’t have given consent if he was not in his right mind. 

Somehow, that makes him feel relieved. That he didn’t do it. That he didn’t _ask_ for it. 

When he walks outside, Steve is sitting on the stoop despite the chill and he stands up, holding out his hand for Bucky and then pulling him in for a hug. 

“Did you want to get some really awful sweet coffee?” Steve asks, burying his nose into Bucky’s hair. 

“Mm, I do, I want a white chocolate mocha,” Bucky mumbles, nosing until he can press his face into Steve’s open collar and breathe in his aftershave and close his eyes against the afternoon sun. 

This is where he wants to be, this is where he belongs.

“I was also thinking…”

“That’s dangerous, you’re the one who took all the stupid,” Steve says, wrapping Bucky tighter and not letting him get away. Bucky can feel the smile into his hair and he slips his hands into Steve’s jacket pockets. 

“I want to go away with you somewhere – like a vacation,” Bucky says carefully.

He draws back and looks up at Steve, curious, afraid – but Steve is just smiling at him, heart on his sleeve.

“I only ever got to travel for war,” Bucky says, “I want to try it for fun. I want to try it with _you_.”

“Yeah?” Steve asks.

“Yeah.”

Steve leans in and brushes their noses together almost as a warning before he’s cupping Bucky’s face and tilting it up for a kiss. 

“I’d love that,” Steve says, voice low and pleased. 

They walk to the coffee shop a block over and then walk back to the tower together, a pleasant silence wrapped around them like a scarf. Settled on the couch with the radio on, watching the sunlight play over the hardwood floors as he lays half in Steve's lap, Bucky asks something he'd never had the chance to before.

"Be mine?" 

He's seen it on candy hearts and stuffed bears and coffee cups and he's pretty confident about the answer, but it's novel to be able to ask it. To casually request it from someone he's loved for his whole life. A hundred years... 

Steve's smile is pressed against the side of Bucky's neck and Bucky can feel the rush of air as Steve exhales and noses closer, "I always have been. I always will be."

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for joining me on Bucky's great big murder flashback adventure! Stay tuned for when I finally get my ass in gear and post the legit playlist. lol
> 
> Also thanks to Rachel for sitting through my headcanons on this and also for putting up with getting snippets with no context. FRIENDS BEST FRIENDS, RIGHT? aljkfds


End file.
